The Hunters
by sulkdodds
Summary: Samuel Long was always looking for adventure, and what could be better than Isla Sorna, hunting dinosaurs? But one by one, people are dying and the line between fantasy and reality is blurring. DONE. to old readers: there's a new chapter in there
1. My Letter Home

* * *

**Jurassic Park – The Hunters**

** Sulkdodds**

Helicopter blades thudded overhead, blaring opera music down into the forest. Smoke, fire, flashes of chaos amidst clear blue skies. I watched it all unwind in a drug-fuelled haze. The jungle stretched away, bleeding into the liquid napalm sunset. A radio spluttered.

"Lo nguc, ke manh? Ynoi tre pang."

I looked blearily into the sun, watched the birdlike silhouettes flit across it.

"Lon! Yar trii pi nga!"

I turned round. Behind me, dark shapes rose up in the trees, sharp teeth, glinting talons. They snarled. In a moment I saw the futility of it all, the reality. "The horror," I said, perhaps a little too melodramatically. "The horror…"

"Long, you're tripping. Stop it," said someone. The dark shapes growled, and pounced.

Rewind. A little background is in order, I think.

* * *

My name is Samuel Thomas Long. My Dad comes from the Caribbean, my Mum from Scotland, and we all lived in central London. I was a privileged black private school dropout. I enjoy extreme sports, watching films and videogames. I had always been a huge fan of war movies, obsessed, even after my carefree childhood had slipped away into sepia-toned memory, with the glamour of it, that ancient fantasy that you were a soldier fighting a war. 

I ended up in Costa Rica, for reasons I won't divulge. It was just a few years ago and I was trying to dredge up enough money to get myself out of the country. Only I spent all my money in escaping the drudgery, the futility, the ennui of modern life. I frittered away my cash to immerse myself in a fantasy world. Yes, I played a lot of videogames in those days. I was younger then, and greener. Just when things were starting to look up, I was shipped out. Okay, so I volunteered.

Perhaps if I hadn't been so mired in fantasy this wouldn't have happened to me. Some very weird shit has happened to me in my life, and I'm writing this just to get it out of my system. Perhaps, by committing it to paper, I'll better understand it. I don't expect anybody to read this. I've never been a good writer, I got a C-grade in English, so this won't be a work of art. Memory blurs the details a little: I can't quite remember exactly what certain people said, but it would be hard to forget the actual events depicted here.

This is the story of what happened just three years ago on a small island off the coast of Costa Rica.

My story.

* * *

_Ahem: I do not own Jurassic Park, the film or the book. Universal do own the films and Michael Crichton owns the books I believe._

_ If you're reading this for the first time, welcome. This story was published a long time ago and it was only recently in rose-tint that I realised a chapter was missing. That chapter has been reinserted, but unless you're an old reader, don't mind me. I've moved on from this story and I don't have a great deal of pride for it, but I hope you enjoy it all the same. _

_I will only write A/Ns at the beginning and end of each chapter, so anything in brackets within the story is still the protagonist talking and not me._


	2. Arrival

_I don't own Jurassic Park, the film or the book. Universal do own the films and Michael Crichton owns the books I believe._

* * *

**I: Arrival **

**Day one**

**1148 hours**

Towering rock walls loomed up on either side, a few shafts of light stabbing down from the sliver of sky above. The two inflatable rubber boats moved slowly along the gully, their beefy outboard motors now silent as we paddled our way in. The walls of the canyon, which wormed its way between the stark cliffs into the interior of the island, were so close I could have touched them. The only noise was of the sea and the faint chirruping of jungle birds high above. It was eerie. It was just how I had imagined it.

But even as we entered this oasis of calm, excitement coursed through me. We were finally here. I was journeying into the mouth of hell. I was going out to live in the jungle, learn how to survive. We all were. The dingy bounced off the side of the ravine. I checked my rifle, an M-16 with attached scope and a long barrel. The others had more heavy-duty firearms. Sniper rifles and machineguns. But what can I say? We had to buy our own, and I didn't have that much money to spare - I had spent most of my cash on just getting over here. I wouldn't need any of it anymore.

I looked around, fiddling with the joint between my fingers and then taking a long drag. Funny, I had never been a big one for drugs before but I felt I had to get into the feel of things, get into the mood. Coles, a small man with a moustache altogether too big for him, offered me a sandwich.

"Ain't got time to feed," I quipped.

He shrugged and took a bite into the food. I carried on staring upriver, wondering what this place had in store for us. We were here to hunt and we were ready for anything the jungle could throw at us. Armed to the teeth, camouflage fatigues bought cheap from army surplus and a hired pleasure yacht that we wouldn't be returning. Hell, I'd even found the time to get hold of a tin helmet and scrawl 'Born 2 Grill' on the side.

The canyon was becoming more shallow now, the sounds of the sea more distant. I wiped sweat off my brow and trailed my hand in the cool water, watched a few fish nibble at my dark skin. A chopper strummed the air faintly in the confines of my head. Relax.

Hannigan, who was in a way the leader of our group – a well built man with another fine moustache and a Texan drawl, the archetypal American big game hunter – raised his hat from its position over his eyes. He looked back to the other dinghy, and signalled to Blake, a tall black man who kept taking long gulps from his canteen.

"Okay guys. We're about to land. Be ready, yeah?" he said, raising his gun. "You all remember what I told you."

Oh, and he'd told us plenty. Don't leave a trace. Watch your back all the time. Be stealthy, clear up any mess you make, keep everything with a smell in sealed plastic bags and always stay within sight of another person. There'd been lots to memorise. But that just added to the fun – we were being drilled, trained and given a briefing. I was eager to get into combat, so to speak.

The change in the landscape was sudden. In seconds, we were drifting down a deep, wide river with banks a few metres tall and gently sloped. Long grass and tropical trees rimmed the edges, with vines hanging down over the brown waters. A few in our group were chatting idly. Someone was even listening to Hendrix on a walkman. It was all so perfect.

The jungle's sounds and smells were more brutal now, less of a background than a pervasive, insidious force, hammering itself into our senses. The sunlight hit us at full strength, as did the horrid humidity of the tropics. Despite the industrial-strength insect spray, we were being eaten alive by biting flies. It was so hot half the group had already taken off their tops, and even I removed my helmet. Hannigan began to steer the boat in towards a likely looking shore, where an old jetty and rundown boathouse stood, overgrown and reclaimed by nature.

The bottom of the dinghy scraped across the mud below, and one at a time we disembarked. As soon as I stepped off I was up to my ankles in mud and grime, and I held my gun aloft as I waded towards dry land. The others already there were standing around, waiting for the second boat to pull up, sharing a cigarette.

"Having some trouble there, Long?" sneered Smith. "Keep up."

I gave him a cursory 'whatever' and sat down on a log, raising my own spliff to my lips and laying my rifle across my lap. I watched the others disembark and then Hannigan and Blake pull the boats ashore. They would be needed to bring more supplies from the ship, but after that they would be deflated and stored in the boathouse until the need for them came again. After that was done, Hannigan held his finger to his lips, and set off into the undergrowth.

Almost immediately I felt the savagery of the place close in around me, the promise of death skulking in the air and in the darkness. I was up to my armpits in wet vegetation, fern leaves and prehistoric flora. As for the fauna, I was hoping I'd get a chance to see some real soon. After a few minutes we could no longer hear the sound of running water from behind us. Somewhere in the distance, there was a throaty cry.

Jungle. Let me tell you about the jungle. Imagine the hottest you've ever been, then imagine it twice as hot. And wet. The air is almost steam, so humid it's covering your skin with little water droplets that mingle with the sweat and then run down your arms, drip through your clothes, soak them. You step uncertainly over debris on the ground, because it's covered in dried leaves and knobbly roots. And it's loud. That's something you'd never imagine before you had experienced it, but the chorus of the birds and the bees is almost deafening. Often you can't see more than ten feet in front of you, and it's darker than you'd expect. The only light is dappled, like sunlight refracted through the surface of a swimming pool onto the submerged tiles.

The weirdest thing is how big it is. How utterly dwarfed you are by the gigantic trees, the tall ferns. Some of the trees were so big its roots were taller than we were, and formed valleys and rifts all around the trunk. The canopy is far above. Bushes and plants are twice as tall as you and all of them are growing ever upwards towards the light. We were wanderers in a prehistoric dream.

"Man, this is so cool," I muttered.

My gun was sweaty in my hands as I stepped carefully between giant gnarled tree roots and rotting logs. Behind me, Coles and a former white-collar worker in LA, Bradley, were chatting idly.

"So where you from, Coles? Why'd you come out here?"

I heard Coles' thin, reedy voice answer. "I was back in San Diego before I met Han –" (what we called Hannigan) "- and I owed a lot of people a hell of a lot of money. When my girlfriend left me I decided there was no point me staying. Went down to Costa Rica. Met Han in Puerto Dominica and here I am, man. Hey, Long. What about you? You're a Brit. How'd you meet Han?"

I turned. "And how is it your business…?"

Coles shrugged, like he always did. "Hey, I just wanted to know, man. We all got our reasons. You don't wanna tell us? Sure, that's cool."

I didn't. That was what I was here for. To escape.

"Quiet," said Blake, in a hoarse stage whisper. Hannigan held up his hand and I bumped into the back of the man in front of me. Everyone crouched down in the undergrowth as Blake slowly raised his rifle. I was so excited you could have seen me jittering. It must be the real thing, I thought.

"I see one," said Blake again, in his monotone voice. "It's big…bigger than a man…looks carnivorous…"

Hannigan sidled up next to him and peered through his binoculars. I raised my head above the foliage and saw a dim shape in the forest ahead. I inhaled quickly.

"Ah…magnificent," he said. "It's a Carnotaurus. You want to do the honours?"

There was a lot of excited whispering. Several of us craned our necks and brought binoculars to eyes to get a glimpse of the beast. They were all thinking the same as me. A dinosaur. This was so cool.

Blake grinned and set his gun's folding bipod on a rock. "I've got it..."


	3. Hardcore, Man

_I don't own Jurassic Park, the film or the book. Universal do own the films and Michael Crichton owns the books. I think._

* * *

**II: Hardcore, Man **

**Day One **

**1230 hours**

"Bloody hell," I muttered, wafting the gun smoke away.

"Yeah, I think it's dead now Blake. You only had to fire once," said Smith.

Blake only grinned and folded up his bipod again. I stood up, peering through the plants ahead. Hannigan began to creep through them, towards the body. I followed suit, brushing past moist ferns and tree trunks.

The dinosaur had been large. Around eight feet tall and twice as long, greenish in colour and apparently a biped when it was alive, it lay sprawled on the ground. It looked like it could easily gore every one of us. Its jaws displayed rows of sharp serrated teeth and two stubby horns protruded from just above its eye sockets, which were nothing more than a mess of blood and bullet holes. The skin looked tough and rubbery, the pattern of the scales reminding me of pebbles on a garden path. The monster's leg, muscular and powerful looking, was still switching.

"Distributed nerve systems, see," said Hannigan. "They don't die all at once."

Blake wrinkled his nose at the stench, and then bent down to take a closer look at the thing. He felt its clawed arms, squeezed and pinched the hard scaly flesh, and prised open its bloodied jaws to stare at the array of dirty white daggers, strips of old flesh still ensnared upon them. A moment later he took his knife and stabbed it down into the gum around one of the larger teeth, wrenching the blade back and forth until the tooth finally tore out. Blake pocketed the prize and stood up.

"Happy?" smirked Hannigan.

"Oh hell yeah. Hell yeah."

* * *

We moved on through the steaming mists. As I walked, I swung my gore-tex rucksack round so it was slung across my chest, and searched through it for the map that each of us had been given a copy of. The map of Isla Sorna. 

Ah, there it was, crammed in between the plastic bags containing food and some books on jungle survival (plus one on dinosaurs which I had bought from a second hand shop just in case). I pulled it out, gripping it under my chin. There was the river landing, or the LZ as I liked to call it, circled in red crayon. And there was what Hannigan had worked out would be the best place for a base camp. A red ring around a small hill on the southeast side of the island, with the legend 'Bravo Base' scrawled next to it, in herbivore territory and near the coast. We wouldn't be attracting much attention from the 'lizards', as most people called them, with all the precautions we had taken to make no sound, no smell, and leave no sign of our existence. And in emergencies, we had more weapons than a small third-world country.

I slid the map into one of my rucksack's side pockets, and looked ahead. We were now moving through slightly less dense jungle, on the edge of a large area of scrubland, with (I checked the map once again) the ominous spine of the Ridge Road rising up behind it. Around us was the wide delta of the island's river. In the far distance I thought I saw long necks above the trees, but it could easily spires of smoke from the geothermal geysers I knew were dotted around the Southwest, or my imagination, which was already in overdrive. I turned my head to face every rustle in the bushes, every suggestion of the sound, on the lookout for a potential kill. But there was nothing nearby. I rolled a joint to calm myself, and concentrated on admiring the scenery, beautiful in a hard-edged, primitive way.

We had been marching for a long time, and my feet were long since tired and my boots long since soaked when Hannigan, creeping along in front, held up his hand for us to halt. He turned around and spoke to us in a quiet voice.

"Okay. Well, welcome to lizard country, ladies. The ultimate wilderness holiday ain't it? Now before we set up camp we're going on a little teamwork exercise. If we want to survive here we gotta work together, right? So we're going out to kill us a big fuckin' lizard. I want you all to keep quiet, stay in twos and follow my lead. Now let's go."

I was thrilled. My first combat operation already. Excited muttering welled up from all sides of the group, and from everybody I heard the subtle click of people checking their firing chambers. I looked at the compass mounted on my wristwatch and saw that we were heading east, towards the plains where herbivores apparently grazed in huge herds. Coles tapped me on the shoulder.

"Time to have some fun, yeah? Should be a right laugh." He said. "Hey, you look flushed. You okay?"

"The heat," I said, and turned away, climbing over a fallen tree and moving on.

It wasn't long before I heard them. Ahead of us, a loud honking, and a continuous low hoot. The jungle here was more akin to redwood grove than tropical jungle and huge trees towered above a relatively sparse forest floor. Cold light shone through the trunks, outlining them in shades of black. In a clearing ahead I saw something big block the light, and then move aside again. Everybody stayed low as we fanned out along the edge of trees, staying hidden among the foliage. Me, Smith and some guy named Dearing I didn't really know ended up together, trying to keep ourselves hidden.. The hooting, and the sound of heavy breathing, was deafening. I parted the leaves.

Right in front of me, a brown scaly leg pounded the mud, then lifted away. Then a long tail whipped past, revealing the scene. A herd of large horse-faced dinosaurs, each one as big as trucks, milled around the sparse trees, large ones pulling leaves from trees and passing them down to smaller beats, which I assumed were the babies. The adults had a huge crest extending from the back of their head, which supported a loose flap of vibrantly coloured skin that seemed to brighten and darken as the animals moved. Vast muscles were clearly visible writhing under a their thick skins. For such huge creatures they moved incredibly fast, seeming alert and intelligent. But their eyes were blank and docile. I tried to remember the quick glance I had given the dinosaur book on the boat.

"Hadrosaurs," I whispered. "Erm…Parasaurus. Or something."

"Yeah, whatever, Long. Be quiet," hissed Smith, raising his rifle.

I lay down between two tree roots, and jammed my own gun it into the crook of my shoulder. I flicked the fire setting to single shot mode and waited. Looking slightly to the right I saw Hannigan and Blake, frantically signalling for everybody to watch one particular dinosaur, which had started to move away from the rest of the herd. Silently we retreated back into the ferns and flitted between the tree trunks, angling towards the lone animal. It walked slowly deeper into the forest, stopping here and there to nibble at plants. The rest of the group was a little way behind, save three men who were sneaking round the other flank of our quarry.

The animal stopped to sniff at the ground, an oddly dog-like behaviour for such a massive creature. We were now little more than twenty metres away. Hannigan signalled silently for us to ready for the kill. I peered through the scope of my gun, resting the crosshairs first on the thing's side, and then on its head.

"Lizards won't know what hit 'em," whispered Smith.

Suddenly I caught a glimpse of something else, watching.

A long, lizard snout protruded from behind a bush, palm fronds covering the animal's body. It was brownish, with dull green stripes down its neck and back. It was obviously a predator. It opened its mouth for a moment, displaying sharp teeth and a long, almost prehensile tongue, and then snapped it shut. A viciously clawed hand rose to scratch. Its eyes were focused on the hadrosaur. I go the impression of cold, calculated intelligence, and more than that, malice. There was a gloating evil about it, like it would enjoy killing you not for food, but for pleasure.

I waved my hand at Hannigan and he nodded. He saw it too. He shook his head, no. Wait and see what happens.

I scanned the tree line opposite. There were three or four heads concealed in the undergrowth. I caught a glimpse of a sleek powerful body and thin tail through the trees. I held my breath. Nothing happened for nearly two minutes. My trigger finger was beginning to itch.

Bam.

Without warning two of the things shot from cover just ten metres to our left. They moved like lightning, so fast I couldn't believe it, and leapt onto the hadrosaur's back with an unearthly screech. Only now did the others spring forth, covering the ground easily and cutting the prey to ribbons. I watched, stunned.

The hadrosaur bellowed, an ear-splitting screech so loud it made my eyes water, and stumbled sideways. One of the predators darted in, nipped at its belly and jumped quickly backwards. Two others clung to its heaving sides and gutted it. One slashed at the neck, a crimson spray gushing forth. The hadrosaur stopped bellowing. It swayed. The hunters detached themselves just in time as the huge animal keeled over with a final nasal honk and hammered into the mud. The air was thick with dust and animal screeching.

I couldn't see much in the frenzy bar flashes of ripping talons, snapping jaws and sprays of blood as the predators jabbered and yowled, spluttered and chuckled in their weird guttural gargle. Smith tapped me on the shoulder and we silently retreated.

It was too late. One animal looked up for a second and let out a high-pitched roar, spreading its jaws wide and tensing its body. A moment later it was charging.

Fifteen metres, ten, five…

"Shoot it! Shoot the thing!" screamed Smith behind me.

I froze. Faced with the enemy, I was suddenly powerless. And now it was in my face, the claws and talons and teeth thrashing before me.

"Shoot!"

There was a deafening explosion next to my ear as Dearing fired and the dinosaur jerked backwards, flame ripping into its chest. I scrambled away as it began to convulse, falling on its side on the ground and going into spasms. Blood splattered on the tree next to me. Smith yanked me backwards and shouted something, but I couldn't hear. The gunshot had deafened me. I started to run.

Dearing was right next to me, holding his smoking machinegun. He looked stunned for a second, and then followed suit, turning and fleeing into the jungle.

Behind me I heard screams, snarls and one loud bang as the rest of the pack attacked. Looking to the side I saw Blake, Hannigan and Coles all running and firing back behind them. There was a loud panting behind me but I didn't dare turn around. I kept running, raced between trees, over logs and debris, and stumbled down a hill thick with greenery. I ducked and rolled on landing and hit flat ground running once again. My shoulder bounced off a tree. I kept going.

I heard gunshots in the forest, and animals screaming. Jungle flashed past, a green and brown blur. I splashed across a shallow stream, up the opposite bank and onwards into thicker undergrowth. I stumbled, fell over, got back up again, and tripped over a tree root, falling face-first in the dirt.

Breath came in short ragged bursts. Amazingly, I was still gripping my M16, knuckles white. The world spun. I looked around.

Nothing.

I braved standing up and saw Dearing, leaning against a tree, out of breath. Winded, I bent from the waist, gripped my knees, and vomited from pure exertion.

Dearing looked up. He was grinning. "Fuckin' A, man! You believe that?" He gasped.

I just stared at him. "You enjoying yourself?" I managed. He just laughed. So did I.

"Crazy," I said.

"Don't start laughing about it, you goddamn coward," said a voice behind me. I turned. It was Smith. My smile faded.

"I saw you," he said. "Do you have no balls, is that it? You could have gotten us all killed!"

"Yeah," I said. "Nice to see you too, Smith."

"To hell with you. You freakin' froze, man. You're a goddamn coward," he repeated as I started to walk away in the direction I thought the others might be.

"Spare me this, please. Let's just get back to the others," I sighed. Problem was, he was right. We had come out here to escape monotony, to be something, become masters of our own worlds. Be real men. And there I was, petrified into inaction in the face of danger. I didn't dare look at Dearing, my savour.

* * *

Lost in the jungle for days, avoiding the lizards and surviving on nuts and berries once our meagre rations ran out, we would eventually get back to camp just in time to fend off a massive attack. That was how it was supposed to go. In reality, we had hardly walked half a mile from the hunting party and soon found them, especially as they were looking for us. 

I walked through a veil of vines to be confronted with the barrel of a gun, and behind that Hannigan's stern face. The gun dropped.

"Hey there, kids," he said. "Don't say a god damn word and follow us."

I followed, Dearing and Smith (who was scowling) in close step behind. Hannigan moved ahead to the front of the column as we moved on through the trees and eventually came to a dried-up streambed. The rest of the group climbed down into it and followed it up a hill. The hill, I assumed.

When we got to the top I was surprised to discover tents and sandbags had already been set up. Coles was there, hammering away at what looked like the beginnings of a hut. Others were securing tent pegs or just sitting around smoking. Hannigan sat down in a hammock strung between two trees and lit a cigar of his own. Typical, I thought. The officers get cigars while us grunts have to make do with DIY rollups.

"Welcome back, you three. Make yourselves comfortable and report for drilling in twenty minutes. This isn't a holiday camp. Carry on."

"You goddamn-"

"Shut it, Smith," I said, ducking into a tent where Bradley and two other no-name squaddies were playing cards. I dumped my bag and almost got out into the open air before someone piped up, "So I hear you froze out there today, huh Long?"

I didn't even turn my head. "What of it?"

"Were you scared? Scared of the lizards?"

This time I did turn. The speaker was…Clark, that was his name. "Yes, Clark. I was so terrified I screamed like a big girly girl." The group sniggered.

"Yeah, very funny! Very funny, greenhorn!" shouted Clark as I stepped out. I took care to loosen the pegs on the tent. I didn't want him not to have an accident.

* * *

_(ORIGINAL A/N) Reviews already? Well, thanks for them!_

_Skyren: I'll be waiting. :D_

_Anguirus: We'll see…hope you find subsequent instalments just as interesting._

_Robert: Well, er, thanks. And what's wrong with a white background? Books have white backgrounds…_


	4. Sanctuary

_Don't own Jurassic Park in any way, the film or the book. Universal do own the films and Michael Crichton owns the books. Doesn't he?_

* * *

**III: Sanctuary**

**Day 2**

**0510 hours**

The camp had been fully completed before sundown. Sandbag walls were erected and tripwires were set up all around the base to warn of impending doom. The hut was finished surprisingly quickly, and was used to store all the perishable foods and some of the hardware we had brought. The centre of the place was a large marquee tent of camouflage canvas, with enough room for us to all sit down inside it. It had taken several boat trips to ferry all the equipment from our big boat anchored offshore. People had sectioned off their own little corners, with many hammocks strung between the trees at the edge of the clearing.

Hannigan had his own tent, complete with a crudely fashioned desk he had hacked himself from a tree trunk. Outside there was a blackboard with the day's operations and task rota scribbled on it. He seemed intent on running as tight a ship as possible with military precision, and that suited me fine.

The next morning, bright and clear, dawned. Today's board read:

'5:00am – Wakeup, all squads

5:30am – Fall in, all squads

6:00am – Recon, Sector 1 North, Alpha squad

- Recon, Sector 3 East, Bravo squad

- Camp duties, Charlie squad

12:00pm – Lunch, all squads

1:00pm – Hunt, Sector 2 West, Alpha Squad

- Camp duties, Bravo squad

- Fishing, Charlie squad

5:00pm – Report in, all squads

6:00pm – Dinner, all squads

7:00pm – Camp duties, all squads

7:20pm – RR, all squads

9:00pm – Hunt, Sector 3 East, Bravo squad

12:00am – Report to base, all squads

12:15am – Guard duty, Charlie squad

- Lights out, Alpha Bravo squads'

…But of course, Alpha and Bravo squads got all the fun. I pitied the poor guys in Charlie squad…

'IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Alpha Squad: Hannigan, Blake, Denver,

Bravo Squad: Clark, Marlow, Coles, Medina, Ellis

Charlie Squad: Dearing, Long, Bradley, Smith,

Stay in groups at all times!

-Han'

…Damn. _Damn._ I couldn't believe it. One screw up and already I was on shit detail. The fact that Smith was also stuck in the lower ranks offered a little satisfaction, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Fishing? Camp duties? When did I get to go kill me something? Where was the action? I would be having words about this. Oh yes.

Dearing came up and stood next to me. "Man," he said. "This sucks."

"Tell me about it," I answered. "Come on, let's go out and check those tripwires. We can have a smoke."

He nodded curtly, and we set off down the hill into the trees. Dearing rolled the fattest joint I had ever seen and smoked it while his hand rested on his gun the whole time. Like he was some highly trained commando or something. He kept taking shifty glances around him, scanning for threats. Okay, so I was as caught up in the atmosphere of the place as he was, but it still riled me. As I bent to look at one of the tripwires something snapped in the undergrowth. Like a shot, Dearing had his gun to his hip and was swinging it around in wild arcs.

"Jesus, Dearing!" I shouted, surprised. "Put it away!"

I stood up in time to see a small squirrel-like creature dash away into the undergrowth. Dearing looked embarrassed and lowered the M60. "Sorry, man. Just a little jumpy."

"Christ…look, calm down, right? You're not in a combat zone. Nothing. Is. Happening."

"Yeah, yeah, alright. I said sorry."

"Fine."

"Hey, you see something?"

I spun. Dearing laughed. "Joking," he said simply, and turned away towards the next tripwire. I sighed, mopped my brow, and followed him, marvelling, now I had the time, at the verdant wildlife. High above, the constant jungle cacophony continued.

"Reminds me of my time in 'Nam," said Dearing. "Cheltenham."

That was one of many days that passed incredibly, agonisingly slowly. It was better later, when Dearing and me became good friends – but at the time it was just depressing. We spent our time fishing, or clearing fields and planting crops around the base camp. Hannigan had told us at first we would need to make a few trips across on the boat to the mainland, to gather supplies and so on, until we had our self-sustained paradise up and running smoothly. Anyway, when we did go hunting it was fun, but always with Smith. Smith, who could turn anything I said into an opportunity to verbally slap me in the face. Dearing couldn't stand him and his holier-than-thou attitude either. Smith's shooting sucked, not that he would admit it. Bradley wasn't so bad, but he would do anything Smith said and was so incredibly dim it was hard to believe.

"Man, he really is stupid isn't he?" I said to Dearing one day, as we sat on the riverbank, legs dangling in the water and fishing rods abandoned at our sides along with our heavy boots. We were watching as Smith and Bradley had an argument on the other side of the bank, about how to catch more fish. Bradley maintained that they should just use their guns.

Dearing adopted a frankly ridiculous Southern accent. "Son, he may look dim, but it's good ol' boys like him that are winning this war," he deadpanned.

I snorted. "The only thing he'd win is a staring match. He's like Forrest Gump or something."

"Yeah. He probably thinks this is just one big long wilderness holiday," Dearing said, and crossed his eyes. "Duh, we'd take these real long walks and we were always looking for this guy named Charlie."

"In a way this is like a holiday, you know?" I said with a laugh. "We get to go out and pretend to be soldiers, only we _are_ soldiers. It's fun."

Lifting a joint to his lips, Dearing cocked his head. "Sure, you may think it's fun now. But you wait till you're biting the dirt in down in the valley with overgrown lizards biting your ass off. You won't be laughing."

"But you will. Like a fucking lunatic."

Dearing laughed and picked up his fishing rod, hurling the bait into the water. "We should catch something before Bradley really does start shooting," he said.

I walked past him, further down the river to where it was at least ten metres wide, and crawled out on top of an outcropping of rock. I stood up and waved to Smith on the other side of the river, flipped him the bird, and cast my line out into the muddy water. I wanted to look at the books I had brought with me without interruption.

The first was the I-Spy Dinosaurs book. Every time you saw a dinosaur (skeleton. Not a real one, obviously) in a museum you were supposed to tick it off in the book for a certain value of points. Once you had fifty points you could send off for a badge or something. I flicked through the garishly coloured pictures until I saw something I recognised:

'Name: Parasaurolophus (pronounced Para-saw-oh-loaf-us)

Size: 8-12 metres long, 4-5 metres tall.

Weight: 2-5 tons.

Diet: Plants

Period: Mid-Late Cretaceous

Parasaurolophus was a large herbivore (plant eater) that lived in the Cretaceous period. It had a large crest on its head and had a very unusual nose. It stood on two legs and moved in groups, the adults protecting the babies. Parasaurolophus would have been able to run fast and probably had very good eyesight and hearing.

2 points.'

It was at this point I realised I probably should have taken the time to get a proper dinosaur book, one for adults. Despite myself I searched my bag for a pen and ticked the little box at the bottom of the paragraph. Glancing at the picture again, I was satisfied that the artist had gotten the colour completely wrong.

A cheap spy novel whiled away half an hour at least. It might have lasted longer if the fishing rod hadn't suddenly jerked violently in my hands, causing me to drop the book into the clear water below the rock I was perched atop. I shouted and stood up, wrestling with the line. Twenty metres away Dearing rose and ran along the bank towards me, looking into the water to see what had taken the bait.

"It's a big one!" he shouted. "Give it a bit of slack, I'll try and catch it with the net!"

I obliged and felt the thing thrash from side to side on the other end of the nylon line. Dearing slid underneath the rock outcropping and reached out with his net. "Reel her in!"

The fish stopped flapping for a moment and I wound the reel back towards me, hearing the click as the line was pulled in. Dearing leaned further out over the water. I took a step forward and braced myself against the rock. I heard Dearing shout that he almost had it, and then there was an enormous tug on the line.

The next few moments were like something out of a cartoon, a Tex Avery sketch brought to life. The rod jerked so hard that I fell off the rock and face-first into the water. There was a stinging slap and next moment I was immersed in a storm of bubbles and white foam. The line snapped, leaving the fishing rod still in my hands and me thrashing around.

My head broke the surface and I gasped air, opened my eyes to bright light. Behind me I heard Dearing laughing manically, and in front of me I saw Bradley on the other bank, stunned. I stayed there, treading water, staring at the rod in my hands.

"Bloody hell," I said. "Big fucking fish."

Dearing threw his head back. "Haha! I can't believe this! Talk about the one that got away! How big was it, grandpa? Haha! Hahaaohshit-"

Mid-cackle he lost his balance on a slippery stone and belly-flopped into the water. I raised an eyebrow and clapped my hands appreciatively.

Dearing rose to the surface, and grabbed at the roots on the bank. I climbed up onto a rocky shelf and rolled over onto my back, staring up at the sky.

"That," I said, "was the most amazing triple-flip flail entry with pike I have ever seen in my life."

"Do I get a medal?"

"Sure. And we'll throw a parade in your honour."

Dearing finally stopped floundering around and managed to drag himself up onto the mud. "I won't tell anybody if you don't, huh?" he panted.

"Right," I said, and then stood up. "Hey Bradley!" I hollered, hands cupped around mouth. "Forget what you just saw!"

"Forget what?" he yelled back. For an idiot, he could be amazingly perceptive.

* * *

Endless afternoons in the sun fishing and relaxing near the camp, or stalking the jungle, treading carefully, watching for the slightest hint of a sound, enveloped me. Looking back it's all blur. A hazy, lazy summer holiday, suddenly and sharply interrupted by occasional gunshots. Seeing Ellis' body brought back, flesh stripped to the bone, and buried without much ceremony. There was just enough danger, just enough creeping menace, to keep us sharp. Always go out in threes and fours because the dinosaurs, even the raptors, were less likely to attack a grouped target. They'd keep out of your way. Go out on your own, and the compys or the raptors or even sometimes the big carnotaurs would pick you off.

Heat haze on the horizon as me and Dearing sat on the rock by the river, smoking, arguing about whether it was 'grey' or 'gray', 'colour' or 'color', bitching about pet hates, discussing our favourite films and videogames.

"So what's your favourite Vietnam film?" I said.

"Full Metal jacket. Easily."

We had gotten good at fishing. We didn't go hunting much, Charlie squad.

"Hmm," I murmured, gazing across the valley at long dinosaur necks towering over the trees, five miles away. "It's a toss-up between Platoon and Apocalypse Now-"

"Redux or original?" Dearing said.

Part of why we were friends was our shared oppression by the rest of the group. Sad to say, it wasn't just that first mission where I earned my reputation as a coward. The second one, I didn't get any kills. Third, I hid when I was supposed to be a decoy. Fourth, I had left my safety catch off and accidentally fired a clip into a bush, scaring away the quarry. The most recent mission I had actually 'killed me a lizard'. But only after Dearing had gone a little crazy with the gun and scared a rogue parasaur towards me. Dearing didn't get the best treatment, being with me. But he stuck with me, didn't sell out for popularity points. Thanks, Dearing.

_"How you doing there, greenhorn?" asked Smith. Every day._

_"I would steer clear of him, Dearing. He'll get you killed," said Blake._

Taunts echoed in my head. I was feeling a little drowsy, out of touch with reality. Might have been the heat, or the weed, or both.

_"How's your friend, huh? Least he's not a coward," said Smith._

_"Better get serious if you want to kill something," said Denver, a lackey of Blake's._

"_Hey, FNG! Don't point that thing at me!" said Clark._

"_Hey, you scared, kid? Don't be," smirked Blake._

"_You freeze this time, huh?" said Blake._

"_Still freezing?" Smith._

_"You scared, kid?"_

"_Scared, are you?" _

"_Scared?" _

"Redux," I said, blowing a smoke ring. "Definitely Redux."


	5. Hunting Raptors

_Me no own Jurassic Park, the film or the book. Universal do own the films, etc._

* * *

**IV: Hunting Raptors**

** Day 45**

**0621 hours**

I woke up slowly and groggily. The day had dawned like any other, with everyone else going off to their respective duties and leaving me alone to clear up the mess they had left behind. Bastards.

Light filtered through the thin olive-drab canvas of the tent roof. I poked my head out into the sunlight, leaving the squalid tent littered with snack wrappers, plates of last night's fish leftovers and abandoned sleeping bags. Outside the camp was nearly deserted apart from Hannigan and Dearing, who were sitting, talking, in deck chairs outside the command tent.

Hannigan beckoned me over and offered me a light. I politely declined.

"So, what are you doing today, Long?" he said, with more respect than usual.

I glanced at the rota. This was a test, right? "Camp duty, sir," I replied. "First I was going to clear up the tent, and then go out on perimeter patrol. Sir."

Hannigan looked up at me and gestured to an empty deckchair. "Sit down, why don't you?"

"More comfortable standing up, sir. What is it you want?"

"Suit yourself," Hannigan drawled. "Now I know you boys haven't been having much fun lately. You're well meaning fellows. A little green, perhaps, but good men. Now I've been thinking, and-"

Dearing, who had been looking as if he was about to burst, couldn't take it any longer.

"We're hunting raptors, Long! Raptors! Tonight!" he said gleefully.

Hannigan glared at him and gave him a punch on the shoulder. "Don't you interrupt me, son. Yep, you're going hunting tonight. Have another look at that board."

I did. Looking down the list I saw we were on camp duties the entire day, until…

'9:00pm – Recon, Sector 5 South, Charlie squad (Smith Bradley).

Hunt, Sector 3 North, Charlie squad (Long Dearing).'

My eyes widened. I looked at Hannigan.

"I'll be coming with you, of course," he said. "To make sure it goes smoothly."

After I had stuttered my thanks he stood up and told us to meet him in the command tent at nine, before retreating into his sanctuary. Dearing stared at me. I stared at him.

We both began talking fast in the same instant. "This is it!" I said. "Let's go tool up!"

"I can't believe this! Man, this is cool," Dearing was saying. We ran back to our tent and armed ourselves, today paying more attention to gun checks and maintenance than ever before. We prepared extra clips and camo netting for the evening and left for the morning patrol. Before long, we were back in the jungle.

We patrolled slowly along the dried up streambed southeast of camp. Ferns and vines were draped lazily from the overhanging canopy. Somewhere, a dinosaur bellowed, miles away.

"What time is it?" I asked.

Dearing didn't even look at his watch. "You asked me five minutes ago. Therefore it is…five past eleven." Now he checked it. "Yep. Five past eleven."

I sighed. "Thought it was half an hour since I asked you at least. This is one of those boring days that's going to go agonisingly slowly, isn't it?"

Dearing wiped his brow, and nodded. "Can't wait to get out there," he said. "Imagine it. There we are, in the middle of the jungle. It's night, you can't see shit. We're gripping our guns, our knuckles are white. Hannigan's just ahead, scanning the area with his binoculars. He opens his mouth to say something. And that-" Dearing jerked his head to his left and made violent slashing motions with his hands, "-is when they strike. A raptor leaps from the undergrowth straight onto him and rips his throat out. We're shocked. We can't move."

He grinned and mimed along to his story. "Suddenly, you come to your senses and raise your gun, like _this_, and you switch to full auto and you fire." He pretended to be shooting a gun. "Bam bam bam bam! Splat! It goes down, but now they're all around us. We're back to back, firing into the woods." He spun around. "I spin around, and there's one behind me. You fire past my shoulder, blowing its head right off. I shout out and shoot past you. The raptor running up behind you gets twenty bullets right between the eyes."

I laughed. "What happens next?"

Dearing smiled and made frantic gestures. "Lizards to the right of us, lizards to the left of us, danger all around. We're standing in a pile of shell casings but there's too many of them. We're going to die. My gun clicks dry and so does yours. Three raptors, as if on cue, rise from the bushes and prepare to strike."

"Well, that's it, is it?" I say, feigning disappointment. "I never even got to raise a family. Man, I wasted my life."

"Just as those thoughts enter your head and you prepare to be slaughtered, we hear rotor blades and rock music blaring above us. Halos of light surround us. A spotlight glares. The forest flattens down around us. It's Blake and the others in a helicopter."

"Dearing. We don't have any helicopters."

"Shut up. Blake's manning the M60 and sprays bullets at the raptors. The chopper lands, the wind almost bowls us over. A dozen hands grab us and pull us on board. We lift off to the sound of the music. The last raptor gets a shotgun in the face for its troubles. The chopper flies into the sunset. Cue credits!"

I shook my head, laughing. "How the hell do we fly into the sunset? It's night."

"Ah, who cares," said Dearing. "Don't cheapen it. Tonight is going to be so cool. I am so-"

He didn't get any further (perhaps a good thing) because at that moment a twig snapped in the vegetation, somewhere off to our right in the trees. This time, I was ready. Before I knew it I had my gun at the ready and I was charging into the jungle. I dimly I heard Dearing call out behind me, but I ran on, determined to prove myself, following the rapidly retreating rustle in the bushes up ahead. I leapt over a log and ducked past thorny branches, splashing down into a small creek and up out again.

Through a veil of ferns and I raised my gun. I burst from cover right on the heels of…

"Medina?" I said. "What the hell are you doing out here?"

Medina, a dark-skinned Latino-looking man with the slightest ghost of a goatee beard upon his chin, got up from where he had fallen, and brushed dust of his shoulders.

"Nothing," he said suspiciously. "Nothing at all, Long."

He began to turn away but I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. "Don't be a cock, Medina. 'Nothing' isn't good enough. You're supposed to be out fishing on the delta."

He sagged. "I'm sorry, Long. I was just…well, I was bored, and I thought I'd play a trick on you guys, like, I was going to jump out on you and…" he looked up into my glare. "Okay, I said I was sorry!"

Dearing leapt from the bushes behind me, pointing his gun all around. "Come on, you bastards! I'll kill you…ah…huh?"

I turned. "It's okay, Dearing. No dinos." I was the only person who still called dinosaurs 'dinosaurs' and not 'lizards'. "Just this prat. He was playing a joke on us." I stared into Medina's eyes. "Apparently."

In fact, I didn't see or hear much of Medina for a very long time after that, and certainly not until the first attack, after which I paid close attention to everyone. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Dearing looked disappointed. "Oh…well…right." He checked his watch. "We'd better get back on patrol. It's only quarter past."

* * *

"What time is it now?" I said. 

"Dude. Shut it."

* * *

And now it was evening, and we were preparing to leave. 

All day my mind had been burning with anticipation. I had been looking forward to tonight's hunt for what seemed like a week. Thoughts of Medina were as far from my mind as concerns about the phone bill. I adjusted the strap on my left shoulder, and shrugged the heavy rucksack back into position.

Dearing was cleaning the barrel of his M60 and fixing the bipod into position. "Lock and load, man!" he said, eyes wide, mouth wide open and tongue out in a rock star grin of mock insanity. "Lock and load!"

"Yeah, whatever, Dearing."

He adopted a serious expression. "Sir, yes sir. Don't forget to fix your bayonet."

I looked once again through the scope on my rifle, satisfied, and smeared green camouflage paint on my cheeks. I spun my revolver around an outstretched finger and then slid it smoothly into my hip holster. I checked my rifle strap, tightened my bandana, plopped my helmet on, screwed the bayonet into place, slammed a clip into the gun, turned the catch to 'safety' position, tightened the camo cape around my shoulders and looked at Dearing.

"Ready?" I said, not even bothering to conceal the excitement in my voice.

He clapped his hands. "Ready."

Hannigan leaned into the tent, wearing his trademark cowboy hat. "Ready?"

"Ready," we said in unison.

"Good."

Outside, a few members of Bravo squad were huddled around a camping stove (no fires allowed, because where there's fire there's smoke), frying the fish they had caught today. Medina was there, who nodded, and Coles, who wished me good luck, and Clark and Marlow, who just sniggered. We walked slowly out of the circle of firelight and into the deep, dark woods. I kept looking up at the night sky until it was obscured by branches.

Hannigan forged on ahead and gave us some typically curt instructions without even looking back. "Okay, you two. We're going up to the old lab complex. We'll get bag two raptors and then evac. Don't speak unless you have to and be alert. I'll tell you when we get there."

The jungle was different at night. Darker, obviously. More claustrophobic. Quieter. And not just quieter, the noises were _different_. There were less honks and moans from the herbivores in the valley and more shrill cries, roars and bellows of predators on the prowl, providing colour against the droning background of chirping insects. I walked as silently as I could, dimly aware we were moving uphill.

Raptors. I knew about raptors. Blake, Coles and Clark would tell tales about how they had looked the wilderness in the eye and it had blinked. It wasn't that hard to bring them down, it was just killing them without the rest of the pack getting you, or, when the situation got really bad, before they killed you first, that was hard. Only a direct hit in the head would do it. Even a shot to the chest was uncertain since they had a great thick ribcage. Of course, we weren't using peashooters.

Fast and smart. That was what everybody said.

The hill got steeper, and steeper until we were almost climbing, and then we hit flat ground again. Somewhere off to our right there was an overgrown dirt track, which Hannigan seemed to be following. Suddenly, moonlight glinted off something metal in the forest in front of us. Unperturbed, Hannigan crept up towards what turned out to be a deep concrete ditch.

On the other side of it, there stood a ten-foot cement barrier, robust metal poles set into it at intervals, supporting a towering fence topped with a roll of barbed wire. The dirt-flecked danger read 'Warning: 50,000 volts' but the lights on top of the fence poles were out, some cracked. Vines and creepers were growing on it.

"It's not live, so just cross the ditch and climb through," said Hannigan. "First line of defence," I thought I heard him mutter.

I dropped down into the ditch, feeling hard concrete under my feet, and gave Dearing a leg-up to the other side. With some difficulty he managed to pull himself up onto the barrier, and then he pulled me up, and we both pulled Hannigan up.

Staring across to the other side of the fence, and for the first time standing above the trees, I could see we had climbed up onto the island's central plateau, isolated from ground level by sheer cliffs on most sides. The location offered a panoramic view of the whole island. In the West, there was still a corona of orange where the sun had dipped behind the horizon over an hour ago. I could see the formations of dinosaurs grazing in the valley, and the high crags that surrounded the island, and something I hadn't expected - a village.

No more than a mile away, a long, low, rusting skeleton of what had been a building squatted between the trees. Nearby there were some houses, a forest of corrugated iron roofs above the canopy, and what looked like the spine of some gigantic creature but what I knew was the power plant. Behind this there was a lake, filled by a short waterfall from the cliffs above. What surprised me were the watchtowers, dotted along the perimeter, a hundred metres or so from the fence.

"What's that?" I asked Hannigan, pointing to the village.

He revealed a pair of wire cutters from inside his jacket began to scissor his way through the chicken wire stretched between the main cables, themselves thicker than my arm. "Laboratory, I think. When InGen were here they had a huge production facility to create dinosaurs. Just there you can see the village, where the workers lived. But they abandoned this place. Now there is only chaos here."

He finished, and stood up. "Ready to tame the wilderness, boys?"

We nodded. Hannigan climbed through the fence and dropped the fifteen feet to the forest floor on the other side. Dearing followed, and after one last look around the island, so did I.

We were back in darkness, but the jungle was sparser here. I could actually see the base of one of the watchtowers somewhere out there. Soon enough we came to what looked like an animal track, but by the way Hannigan looked at it I could tell it was a game trail. He smiled.

"This trail leads towards the research centre. Dearing, I want you to set up by that tree. I'll be further along the trail. Long, you keep lookout, over there. When you see them raise your hand and I'll see you. Move."

He began to unpack a hunk of meat from his rucksack. From the moment the rotten stench of it met my nostrils I began to have a bad feeling about the operation. Still, I crept into the undergrowth and flattened myself against a tree. I had a good chance of seeing any raptors before they saw me.

We didn't have long to wait. A loud gibber rang out somewhere nearby, and then there was silence. Very soon, I could hear quiet snarling, regular and deep. And then I saw them.

They stalked between the tree trunks glowing ghostly white under the moon. There were a dozen of them at least, spread out along the trail but scarily orderly. A few stopped every now and then to sniff the air, or scrabble at the ground. The lead animal passed not ten metres away from me and I thought we had been found. Amazingly, the raptors continued straight to the bait. I waved my hand frantically, and the heard Hannigan's voice in my ear.

"Wait until one breaks off, point to it, and follow it," he said. Then he was gone.

The raptor leader looked quizzically at the meat, looking around, obviously suspicious. It stepped back.

It's not going to take it, I thought. The thing bent down and sniffed the bait, then straightened up. It walked slowly around in a circle, and then crouched down, stood up again, and waved its arms. It bobbed its head a few times. Suddenly, the rest of the pack pounced upon the meat.

In the ensuing squabble several animals were expelled to the edges of the group and began to wonder off into the jungle on their own. Good plan, I thought. Distract the rest of the pack and wait till an isolated target of opportunity presents itself.

I glanced over and saw Hannigan concealed between two tree roots. His camouflage was immaculate. He nodded. I pointed at the lone raptor.

Slowly, ever so slowly, we inched our way around the snarling pack, keeping our distance, just in time to see the raptor disappear through the trees. It looked like it was heading for the village. Watching every step, I approached. Dearing emerged in front of me from the shadow of a tree.

"Han's going round the right," he whispered. "We'll follow behind it."

I nodded and we continued forward, staying as low as we could, only sometimes spotting the animal up ahead as it walked through the thicket. Soon enough we came to a large concrete wall, crested by barbed wire. But our eyes were drawn more to the gaping hole that had been torn in the surface of the barrier.

The raptor tracks led through the ancient hole, made by some enormous beast, we imagined. We stopped there, for a second, as the enormity of what had happened here sunk in. Then we continued through, into the village.

I caught a glimpse of the raptor far ahead, moving into the shadow of the village, behind the skeletal spine of the geothermal plant. Silently, me and Dearing jogged through the geothermal array, the wrecked pipes throwing shadows down on us, and crouched low behind a burnt-out jeep, mired in the undergrowth. From here we could see the whole street, the research facility sprawled behind a low iron fence at the end. The raptor glided past a collapsed house and then stopped. It hissed.

From its left, two other raptors emerged from the darkness cast by an overturned truck. They let out a low snarl, and took up positions on either side of our quarry. Together, they darted up the grand stairway into the lab, and through the glassless double doors into shadow.

"Shit," Dearing whispered. "We'll have to go and get them."

I was just about to reply when a mound of leaves on the other side of the street stood up, and turned out to be Hannigan. I hadn't even seen him. He motioned for us to come to him, and kneeled below a fallen telephone pylon. We raced over to him and crouched low at his side.

"Okay, we're going into the lab. There's three of them in there so keep your wits about you and we'll do just fine."

I glanced at the building and whispered. "You aren't serious, right? They could be waiting to ambush us! It's too confined in there!"

"We're going in, Long. Follow my lead."


	6. Raptors Hunting

_I do not own Jurassic Park, the film or the book. Universal do own the films and Michael Crichton owns the books I believe. Yes he does._

* * *

**V: Raptors Hunting**

** Day 45 **

**2230 hours**

Moonlight cast a long shadow in front of me as I stepped through the broken glass into the facility. Immediately I swept my gun to the left, staring into the shadows, and then to the right. Clear. I beckoned Dearing and Hannigan in and they stepped carefully through after me.

The door opened on a curved corridor, forking off to both sides. In front of us there was a reception desk and a few rotting sofas. The legend 'InGen – Building a better future', in blue 3-d letters suspended on metal supports, was obscured by vines, blocking out the painted frieze depicting dinosaurs in their natural environment. Ancient dust stirred in the air, caught in slanting beams of moonlight. Everywhere, there was this strange sense of…not death, or sadness, but…loss, perhaps.

On the wall there were signs, with arrows pointing left for 'embryo production' and 'engineering', and right for 'administration control' and 'helipad'.

"Which way?" I mouthed. Hannigan just nodded towards the birdlike footprints in the dust, leading away to the left of us. I nodded.

As we followed them, taking care to move carefully and check every corner, I studied the prints. Two long toe-marks and one short, with a dot for where the claw scraped the dust of years. There was an aroma of rotting meat in the air. But I had heard somewhere all predatory animals smelled like that. There were vines growing all along the walls and some of the fire extinguishers were missing. A water cooler lay broken on the floor and further along the corridor something had smashed a hole in a vending machine and scoffed the snacks within. We walked past it and came to a sliding door marked 'embryo production'. It was open.

It was, in fact, a clean room. Clear plastic suits were hanging from hooks and lockers were open or lying on the floor. There were some yellow safety signs but I paid them no heed, proceeding straight to the heavy secondary door. It had been breached, and was flat on the floor. Beyond lay the embryo room.

It was large and airy, the glass roof (with no glass) casting shadows down onto moonlit concrete floor. Gel tanks lined the walls, some cracked and empty and others still full of sickly green liquid. Some of them had…things in them. Baby dinosaurs, maybe. I didn't want to know. In the middle of the room there was a conveyor belt with robotic arms dotted along its length. Above us there were some metal walkways with equipment hanging down and control panels affixed to the railings. Hannigan touched my arm and pointed to the glass doors which led to the engineering room. He motioned for Dearing to take point and I took up my position at the rear, watching out behind me.

As we walked underneath one of the walkways there was a loud clanking sound from above. In a flash I levelled my gun at the walkway above, but it was nothing. I relaxed and calmed myself. There was another clank, and a slight whooshing sound. I span around. Did I see a dark shape for an instant, crouched among the machinery above us? No, I didn't. I was imagining things.

The engineering room was protected by another set of security doors, which were, again, open. The room itself was dominated by three huge grey towers in the centre. Like everything else in the building they had vines and plants growing on them. They stood in their own little pit, which housed a tangle of wires and thick cables snaked around the feet of the towers. There were computer workstations on white desks arranged around them.

I guessed they were supercomputers, and my shot in the dark was confirmed when I noticed the writing on the side: 'Cray 209 XMP'. Hannigan whistled. He started to look around the room, lifting printouts and studying the machines all around the room, poking and prodding at the rolls of ribbed piping and microscopes. He seemed interested.

"Hannigan!" I whispered. "What are you doing?"

He turned to look at me. "Look at all this junk," he intoned. "Relics."

"Yeah, very nice," I hissed. "But the footprints stop here. And I can hear them, Han."

Dearing and Hannigan froze, then stared at me. There was a continuous low snarling, and then a hiss. I heard a slightly louder growl, and looked up into the roof to see a dark shape that was definitely not my imagination flit between the rafters.

Hannigan made frantic hand signals for me to go up and investigate. I beckoned Dearing towards me and mouthed for him to cover me as I climbed a ladder up to an overhanging walkway.

My hand slipped on the rung and I stopped, then carried on and finally pulled myself up onto the metal grating. Unslinging my rifle, I glanced around and saw the whole facility was linked on the second floor. Had the raptors been tracking us? They certainly weren't here.

The metal framework of what had been the glass roof was only a metre above me, tropical mist sliding past. I whirled around to check behind me, turned back. Hannigan and Dearing were back to back and revolving slowly to cover every part of the room.

The snarling started again. It was coming from somewhere ahead of me. There was the creak of a swinging door and a series of loud clanks and taps. I raised my gun, very slowly.

"Didn't I tell you," I said slowly, more to myself than anyone else, "this was not a good idea?"

The clanks were coming towards me, in a stop-start fashion, no rhythm to them. There was a series of taps and then an answering clatter from somewhere else, below me and to my right.

Oh God, I thought. They're communicating.

The Morse code style tapping continued for thirty seconds or so, and then the clanking resumed. Footsteps, coming towards me. I stepped backwards and planted the ball of my right foot on the cold metal. Showtime.

Clank, clank, clank. The raptor rounded the corner ahead of me and looked straight at me, clicking its long toe claws. It opened its mouth and snarled.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, I shrugged, pulled the trigger and held it down. The silence was broken by the tremendous bang. A flash of light. A single shell casing fell to the floor, metres below.

With a start I realised the gun had been set to single shot mode, and I had only fired one bullet. Panicking, I began to fiddle with the fire selection switch, then looked up at the raptor. It had a single bullet hole in its chest, bleeding profusely, but it seemed unperturbed. It charged.

It hadn't gotten three paces before I heard the satisfying metallic click from my rifle as I pressed the switch into the 'auto' position. I pulled the trigger once again. The gun bucked in my hands as I fired. The raptor, still barrelling towards me, was met by a storm of lead coming the other way. It jerked a few times, still closing, and then tripped and slammed to the floor. I heard Hannigan shout. There was a screech and I turned my head, but it was too late. The raptor above me dropped onto the walkway with a heavy crash. A section of the walkway shuddered and tore from the wall. It tipped.

I leapt onto the next section as it came crashing down with the raptor on top of it. Below, it sprawled on the floor and waved its legs in the air. Hannigan and Dearing opened fire on the struggling beast. Through the dome of the roof I could see at least ten raptors outside, ghostly pale, crowing and calling to each other.

"Han!" I said. "We've got company!"

He looked up. "Run!" he shouted. "We'll meet you out back!"

A moment later they were gone and two raptors burst into the room. One chased after Hannigan and the other looked up at me, and leapt twelve foot straight up in the air. It was almost high enough, but not quite.

I spun and legged it. Behind me I heard a crash as it cleared the railings and landed on the walkway. I tried to fire blindly behind me but realised I had no ammo and dived round a corner onto another walkway. As I began to reload, there was a scuffling below me and suddenly something punched a dent in the floor from below. Through the grating I caught a glimpse of a raptor head. I cocked the rifle and fired down through the grate. I heard them yowl with pain and I stepped back several paces.

The one that had been chasing me sped round a corner. Incredibly, its foot hit the empty clip I had discarded. It slipped and bowled over the railings to the floor below. The gun jittered as I unloaded into the floor, whipping up sparks and metallic pings. The raptors screamed.

And the walkway tore loose from the wall.

For a second I tried to keep my balance as one end of it swung down. Then I was jerked off my feet. I yelled, sliding down. I managed to loop my arm around a railing. Inches from my boots a raptor gnashed its teeth, thrashed wildly, and tried to claw its way up towards me. I pulled my legs up just in time as it bit down where my feet had been. The other end of the walkway started to give.

Quickly I pulled myself to my feet, balancing precariously on the juddering slope. I looked around me for an escape route, but there wasn't one. The raptor started to climb up the walkway, using its long claws to anchor itself. It snapped at my legs. I looked up.

And saw…sky. And rafters. Then the walkway collapsed.

From a standing jump I grabbed hold of a metal girder in the roof. With a final thud the entire walkway crashed to the ground, the machines affixed to it exploding in a shower of metal as they were smashed to pieces. The raptor roared. It fell to the ground, then rolled onto its feet.

I ignored its primal screams and concentrated on pulling myself up onto the girder. With great effort I managed to swing my legs onto it and shakily stand up. I walked slowly along the top of the girder, trying to keep my balance.

At the back of the facility a door blew open. Hannigan and Dearing fell backwards out of it ands tumbled to their feet. Dearing looked up and saw me. He waved and shouted at me but I couldn't tell what he was saying.

"What?" I screamed.

"Come on! Get down here!"

Then his face fell, and I looked behind me.

Six raptors, each one bobbing up and down slightly, watched me. They were perched on the struts of the roof, like me. I began to walk backwards, very slowly, and they began to stalk forwards. Very slowly.

Looking behind me, I saw that I was right above the lake. If I could get to the edge of the roof, I could jump off. Could they swim?

I found out early. Tripping over my own feet I keeled over sideways and fell screaming into the water. Blackness embraced me. I thrashed away and upwards, and thrust my head above the water. The six raptors were still standing on the roof, watching in a curious sort of way.

I began to swim away from them towards the nearest shore. Dearing and Hannigan were standing on the opposite beach, next to a concrete stairway leading underground. Dearing jumped up and down and shouted and whooped.

"Can you swim, you fucker? Haha! No you fucking-"

Even as I twisted my neck to look behind me I heard each raptor, one by one, jump and plop into the lake.

"Swim!" shouted Hannigan. "Swim, you stupid bastard!"

Oh yes, I swam. It wasn't any particular stroke - I just waved my arms and kicked my legs in a mad rush. Almost at the bank now. Almost. Dearing and Hannigan urged me on. My foot hit ground. I splashed up the beach and into the arms of Hannigan. He helped me to my feet.

"Where's your gun?" he shouted. "You stupid-"

"I don't know!" I answered, realizing my rifle had disappeared somewhere along the line. I glanced back at the lake. The raptors were swimming across it like crocodiles. "Come on, let's go!"

The three of us hopped two steps at a time down the staircase in the ground. "Stupid. Stupid," Hannigan kept muttering. The steps ended in a metal door, which he threw open, and then into a short tunnel, and then into a garage. It was full of jeeps and trucks.

Dearing shouted in triumph and immediately leapt into a land rover. He tried the key. Nothing.

"It's empty, idiot!" I shouted. "No fuel!"

Hannigan stared at us, wide-eyed. "Long, try the other ones! Dearing, help me bar this door!"

The two of them dragged some fuel drums across the doorway. One by one, I climbed into the jeeps, trying to find one that started. The first had an empty tank. The second, one of the wheels was missing. The third was empty too. The last one spluttered into life for a second, and then the engine cackled and died. Smoke rose from the bonnet.

Finally I came to a bicycle, leaning against the wall. "Han is not going to like this," I said to myself.

"You bet your ass I'm not," said Hannigan behind me. "You're joking. Yes?"

"No."

"Holy Mother of…okay, Dearing, you pedal. Long, sit up front. I'll shoot."

"A bit cramped, isn't it?" said Dearing.

It was. I was sitting on the handlebars and Hannigan sat with his back to Dearing's, his feet gripping the rear wheel guard. As soon as he was on Dearing began to pedal. Taking the bike was one of those stupid things you do when you're panicking. We should have just run for it on foot. It would have been faster.

Luckily for us the road ran downhill slightly so we began to pick up speed. Behind us I heard the door burst open, barrels clattering to the ground.

"Pedal faster!" I said.

"I can't see!"

Behind us the raptors spilled out of the garage and ran towards us with incredible speed. They could have kept pace with a motorbike, let alone us. In seconds they were right behind us. Hannigan tried to shoot one and forced it to dodge his shot. It fell back. The others closed in.

The road was very steep now, so Dearing wasn't really pedalling anymore. We were just coasting. When I say steep I'm talking a 45-degree angle. Ahead of us the road forked in two. Straight ahead was a cliff.

"Dearing! Turn right! Turn left! Just turn!"

I heard his muffled voice behind me. "Why?" Then I realised he couldn't see ahead of us, because I was sitting right in front of him and blocking his view.

"Oh, shi-" I said.

Too late. We hit the flimsy wooden barrier and went right through it. The bike caught on a branch and we were wrenched off it. Hannigan hit the ground first and rolled down the steep hillside, flattening bushes. I fell into a tree, a sturdy limb struck me in the stomach, and I was winded. I fell from the branch and my face hit dirt. Then I slid backwards through a bush, somersaulted heel over head and began to roll.

Grasping wooden fingers tore at my clothes. I bounced off rocks and rolled through thorny bushes. Branches bent and dirt crumble. Several times I actually hit a tree, before continuing my long fall through the forest. I landed in a cradle of branches and fell through into more pain. Something cut my head. Suddenly all was clear, and the ground approached fast. It rushed up to knock the wind out of me, and my vision went red.

To my left, Dearing slid down a muddy slope on his bottom, and a tree hit him between the legs.

I raised my head and spat dirt.

"Aaaah," said Dearing.

"Ow," I said.

For a while I just lay on the ground, getting my breath back. Air came in short, sharp bursts to my lungs. Everything hurt. Frankly, I pity Dearing at that moment.

I scrunched up my eyes and then opened them, sitting up. My leg was bent the wrong way and Dearing was rolling around on the floor a few metres away. I looked up the towering hillside, almost vertical, and saw the trail of vegetation where I had passed, leading right down to the ground.

I hobbled over and kicked Dearing lightly in the kidneys. He groaned. "We're lucky to be alive, you know that?" I said.

Dearing just moaned again. "What was that? I didn't quite hear you?" I asked.

"Fuck…you…" he gasped. I sniggered.

There was crashing in the undergrowth and then Hannigan hobbled down the slope, lost his balance, and fell the rest of the way. To his credit, he got up in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

Amazingly, he was still wearing his hat. "Impossible," I said. "Bloody impossible."

Hannigan stared at me. "Ogeh, you toh eh…" He removed a leaf from his mouth and started again. "Okay. That's it. You two are never hunting again," he said.

"Aaarg," said Dearing.


	7. Restlessness

_I don't own Jurassic Park, anything to do with it, ect_

* * *

**VI: Restlessness**

**Day 89**

**1654 hours**

Hannigan almost managed to keep to his word. We certainly didn't go hunting for a long while. It turned out Dearing had almost gotten him killed inside the lab – bringing half the ceiling down with a grenade. Nice one, Dearing. Nice one.

I had suffered a broken leg in the fall from the raptor hunt, so it had been in a cast since then and was only just beginning to heal. Luckily, the actual breakage wasn't too serious. Once my knee had been painfully bent back the way it was supposed to be, I was told by Clark, the only one of us with medical knowledge, that I would be able to walk without a stick after two more months. At least now I was no longer confined to camp.

I was lying in the hammock I had rigged up between two palm trees on the island's south beach, resting my broken leg. White sand stretched away to the left and right, darker where the crystalline blue surf lapped at it. Something straight out of a holiday brochure. Black cliffs towered above the small lagoon, relatively sheltered from the choppy Pacific Ocean. Behind us, volcanic smoke wafted over the jungle. Through the dark lenses of my sunglasses, everything was tinted brown.

Coles, recently transferred to Charlie squad, swapping with Bradley and Smith, was playing cards with Dearing, both sitting on a rock at the high-tide mark. Marlow, also transferred, sat on his own in a deck chair under the shade of the treeline. He spent all his time scribbling in a notepad. Apparently, he had only come out here to write his novel.

I turned my head back and forth, watching the skies with my binoculars. I swung them towards the cliffs and…bingo. There they were, Pteranodons as far as I could tell, flapping and squawking up on the clifftops. Some flew around in wide arcs, riding the thermals, and every now and then one would tuck its wings and nose-dive into the water, emerging seconds later with a beak full of fish. I focused the lenses on one of the animals. It screeched. I noted the crest on the back of its head and the shape of the beak.

"Definitely a Pteranodon," I said, and dropped the binocs, leaving them slung around my neck. I dug into my pockets for the I-Spy book, pulled it from the mess of snack wrappers, tissues and shell casings. I snapped the elastic band holding it shut around my fingers and thumbed my way through the book to page 21. Finally, I carefully and firmly ticked the box next to 'Pteranodon'. I almost had enough points to send off for a badge now.

I sighed. It had been two weeks now since our adventure at the lab, and I hadn't gone hunting since. Hannigan always found some way to keep me and Dearing back at camp. Right now, Charlie squad were supposed to be fishing, but we had gone down to the beach to relax. The compys had been a problem early on, until they learned to fear men with guns. So now we skived off here whenever we couldn't be bothered to work. In fact, only last week we had had a day off for R&R and had borrowed one of the boats in order to go water-skiing.

Action. That was what I wanted. I wanted to go out and fire my gun and play soldiers. Instead I would get the dull part of army life, the forced marches and the menial jobs. Always the rebel, I would shirk the job and go wandering in the jungle despite my injured leg, or stand atop the high island cliffs and watch the landscape blur on, watch an ecosystem go on without me. Mostly I explored. I had always wanted to be an explorer when I was a kid, then as a teenager, a soldier. Now I could combine both, and yomp across the wilderness searching for ancient ruins or signs of the enemy.

It was there that I acted out my fantasies. Just yesterday I had been on a patrol deep in the jungle when our column was attacked by VC. With the help of air support called in by radio, we managed to pull through. All except Hawkins. He didn't make it.

"Almighty, this is Wildcat Two, we need air support now, understand?" I remember saying.

"Roger that, Wildcat Two, you'd better duck."

And I had seen it there in my mind, clear as day, a line of liquid fire drawn across the jungle in front of me.

The northwest and southeast of the island lay smothered under deep forest, thick and unforgiving and seemingly unending when you were mired in the claws of it. In the far southwest it was even thicker, where raptors roamed. Around our camp was a patchwork of little areas of scrubland and fields of elephant grass, sparse forest with no ground cover, rivers and streams. And in the east, where giant beasts grazed and roamed the land, there were rolling open hills of green, a river valley tapering into swampland, flanked on all sides by prehistoric cycad groves and overshadowed by the huge volcanic cliffs studded with geysers. Then the river swung left, emerged from the swamp into a wide delta in the south of the island.

Somewhere far off there was a gunshot, and birds exploded from the tree tops, flocking away from the noise.

"That'll be Bravo squad," said Dearing, not looking up from his cards. "Charging around the place shooting anything that moves. Bastards."

I could tell Dearing was bubbling with rage underneath his calm exterior by the way he twitched his trigger finger. Anybody else, I would have said 'you'll get your chance' but with him it just would have made it worse. I sighed, and picked up the book I had left face-down in the sand. The shotgun I had been given to replace my lost rifle was resting across my lap. I reached down for my water canteen and held it upside-down over my mouth. It was empty.

"And I've won," said Coles smugly. Dearing glared at him.

Another gunshot echoed in the distance. Then two more. Silence.

I blinked sunlight from my eyes, and looked out to see once more.

"When did Blake say he'd be back?" I asked.

"No idea. This afternoon I think. They said they might take longer though. You're not looking out for them, are you?"

"No," I lied. "Just wondering." Denver and Blake had taken a trip to the mainland to gather essential supplies.

Everything was perfect here. No work. No daily trudge. No existential angst and constant ennui. A veritable sun-kissed paradise, of beautiful scenery of war movie fantasies. Still, I was eagerly waiting Hannigan's return. They had promised to bring newspapers, magazines, and Blake had even agreed to get me some cheap paperbacks to read. I wanted to see what was happening in other places.

Marlow tapped me on the shoulder. "Hey guys. We should be getting back now."

Coles looked at his watch. "Crap. You're right. Okay, Marlow, fishing gear. Dearing, take the deck chair. And for God's sake, Long, get that thing packed up!"

I half-rolled, half-fell from my hammock and untied the ropes anchoring to the trees. I then rolled it up and slung it over my back. The stick I used as a walking aid was propped against a tree. I retrieved it and leaned on it. Dearing folded up his deck chair and held it under his arm. Coles shoved the pack of cards in his breast pocket. Marlow gathered up the four fishing rods, fishing tackle, small bucket of fish we had caught at the river before we got bored, and box of bait (dead compys) and we set off back to camp.

Dearing went ahead, slashing away at the jungle with his machete in frustration. He chopped violently through a curtain of vines as I walked alongside him.

"This," he said, in between swings of the blade, "Fucking. Sucks. I. Want. Action."

With the last word he swung the machete in a wide arc, cutting ferns to ribbons. I decided top take the 'sympathetic' approach.

"Tell me about it, " I said. "I haven't even fired my new gun yet."

"Jesus, Long. I want to kill some fucking lizards. You think Han has something against us?"

I was thinking aloud. "Maybe he does. Maybe we…"

Dearing paused and looked round. "Maybe what?"

I motioned for him to carry on walking. "Maybe…I dunno, maybe he just doesn't like us. And there was that thing with the grenade and me losing my gun and all…" At this comment I ducked just in case it angered him. He just laughed and walked on.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I think that might have something to do with it."

A thousand small, pointless animals chirruped all around us. By the time we came to the streambed that marked the threshold of man's dominion on the island, the sky was darkening and droning cicadas had replaced birdsong. We continued up the hill and out of the thick jungle into the land we had cleared in preparation for Denver and Blake's return. They would be bringing plenty of crop seeds to plant so we could live off the land, which presumably would provide Charlie squad with one more shit detail. The trees had been cut down but the low-lying foliage remained, creating a curious field of waist-height vegetation. The hill, with its sandbags and huts, loomed.

"What is that?" said Coles behind us.

On some high ground to the east of the hill someone had rigged a large metal platform, supported seemingly on a teetering scaffold of alloy struts. Scraps of vegetation on the pointed roof showed at least a half-hearted attempt at camouflage had been made. It looked like a watchtower.

Dearing squinted. "Where the hell did that come from?"

The top of the hill seemed deserted, but from the warm glow within the central communal tent told me dinner had begun without us. We dropped our gear in the hardware shed and while the others headed for the dinner tent I took our catch into the kitchen.

We called it at kitchen, but it was in fact a tall squarish tent, a modern one unlike the archaic boy-scout tents for sleeping in. Warm orange light cast a shadow on the ground through the mosquito netting draped across the entrance. I wiped my feet on the 'please wipe your feet, bitch' doormat and stepped in.

Bright light and all manner of smells assaulted my senses. Wooden planks wobbled under my feet as I shielded my eyes, used to darkness, against the bright electric lantern hung from the roof. There were two folding metal tables, upon which Clark, the only decent cook, and Bradley, who was helping because he had little else to do, were preparing food. Bradley was chopping ineffectually at some odd-looking vegetables. Clark was overseeing a sizzling pot of…stuff.

"Hey, Long! Got fish?" he said shortly and indistinctly. There was a jungle knife gripped between his teeth. "We've been trying to cook a meal with only pre-packaged rice and some jungle fruits."

"What do you mean, jungle fruits?" I said suspiciously.

"You know, fruits. Like mushrooms and stuff. Had to climb some trees to get this stuff."

"But you don't know what it is exactly."

"Hey man, it ain't poisonous. Brad's got this book, tells you what's good and what's not."

"Well that's comforting knowledge. Here." I held up the bucket and passed it over to him. He nodded his thanks and inspected them.

"Not much, is there?" he said slowly. I wasn't going to tell he we had gotten bored of fishing after half an hour and wandered off, so I shrugged and put it down to bad luck. He accepted this and pulled a slippery silver creature from the bucket, slapped it on the workbench, and began to gut it with his knife. I sighed and left, first dropping my bag in my tent and then lighting a cigarette outside. I looked up to the sky, a black abyss dotted with stars and smeared with nebulae. I had always been a city kid, so ever since coming to the island I had marvelled at the night sky, un-obscured by the lights of civilisation.

Presently I saw Bradley emerge from the kitchen tent, struggling with his large tin pot full of fish stew. I got up and limped as quickly as I could across the camp, ducking into the communal tent.

Nobody noticed me come in. The air was thick with voices and pot smoke, with everybody sitting on assorted crates around a central folding table, or lounging around the fringes of the tent. I seated myself next to Dearing, who was moodily staring into space and ignoring the noisy and drunken game of poker next to him. I waved a hand in front of his face.

He blinked, then turned to me. "That," he said. "Is annoying." He cracked a smile. "Where have you been then?"

"Oh, staring up at the sky and pondering the meaning of human existence. And smoking."

"Essential for a healthy mind, that."

"What, smoking?"

"This ain't a no smoking zone," he said, raising his hand to defend against an errant elbow. "As you can both see and smell." He was right about that. Seeing as no chimneys were allowed on account of a bloody massive smoke plume being a bit of a clue that we were here, the tent had very quickly filled with thick smoke, more akin to a London pea-souper than your average gentleman's club cigar haze.

There was a sudden and deafening cheer as Bradley entered with his stew pot and set it heavily down on the table. Clark came in behind him with an armful of metal bowls and the two began passing them out and ladling great dollops onto them. I watched as bowl was dropped in front of me and a large mass of the sludgy grey-brown stuff splatted into it. A spoon had been provided, and unappetising as the stew seemed I was hungry, so I put the cutlery to good use and shovelled food into my mouth.

After dinner there was a spirited game of eight-player noughts and crosses, which was, as you can imagine, a complicated affair. I can never remember who's beer-addled idea that was. And after that, I managed to find out where the new watchtower had come from.

"Denver found it," said Bradley. "It was lying in a heap in the jungle near the cliffs. Han thinks it must be from an earlier research team. Says he's seen it before in hunting catalogues. A high-hide, he calls it."

"Who was here before?" I said.

Marlow piped up. "Well there were a load of hunters in '97. Some genetics corporation wanting live dinosaurs, I gather. They didn't last long. Lizards got 'em."

Everyone laughed at this. I pressed the issue. "Anyone else?"

"Well, you've probably heard about fifty different rumours of plane crashes. And there was another expedition a few years ago, but I don't know anything about that."

At that point someone hit him on the back of the head with an elbow, and a small scuffle started. I sighed, and got up from the table to go outside. Before I walked out I noticed Hannigan was very quiet. He was reading from some sheets of paper. I craned my head to peer at them.

They were the printouts from the labs.

And in the distance, I could have sworn I heard rotor blades.


	8. Another World

_I don't own Jurassic Park._

* * *

**VII: Another World**

**Day 89**

**1903 hours**

Why was Hannigan so interested in the InGen logs? What exactly was he interested in? How, in fact, had he known so much about InGen when we went hunting? I couldn't stop thinking about it. Questions fluttered like moths around an electric light. I realised he had been acting pretty suspicious all the time.

Dearing stuck his head in. "Duty calls," he said simply, and sourly.

The blackboard outside said 'camp duties, all squads' just like it always did, but when we reported to Hannigan's office he pointed us in the direction of the high-hide.

"It needs camouflagin'. Spray it matt black to stop sun glare on the metal and cover it with leaves. I've left a whistle up there if you need to sound the alarm. Hopefully when Blake gets back with supplies we'll have short-wave radio packs for everyone. And when you go on guard duty tonight, I want two men up there. Do I make myself clear? Dismissed."

"What a prick," said Dearing with a grin as we walked out.

I looked at him, adopted a 'serious' face. I wanted to tell him my suspicions, about Hannigan and his printouts, but we were too close to the camp. I went for the old 'I need to tell you something'. He cocked his head, but said nothing. We collected equipment from the hardware shed and stumbled down the hill into the trees, then stopped and stared up at the high hide. It was impressive, certainly. Dearing shook his can of black spray paint.

But I didn't have a chance to tell him about Hannigan. I had just said, "Do you think he's up to something?" when Marlow and Coles came wandering through the forest and stopped at the foot of the high hide.

"Guys?" shouted Coles. I decided to leave revelations till later.

All through our R&R time I didn't have a chance to tell Dearing of my discovery. It was too crowded, there were too many people and we were too stoned. I just pretended to be perfectly happy and carefree like everyone else. It wasn't until guard duty, and a five-hour stretch on top of the high hide, that I felt it safe to talk.

"He's reading the logs from the InGen labs," I said shortly, staring straight ahead out over the dark jungle. Dearing was leaning out over the railings, water dripping from the sloped roof of the shelter onto his hair and running down his face. He was staring at the horizon.

"He's glued to those papers like a terminal TV addict to a 40-inch plasma screen," I continued. "Did you hear him at the labs? He knows stuff. Seems to know all about InGen, and what happened here, doesn't he?"

Dearing remained impassive. "So?"

"So don't you think it's a little weird? Don't you think maybe he's got his own hidden agenda for being here? Hell, those logs alone are worth millions to genetics companies. Think how much he could get for embryos, or even eggs? Even the dinosaur heads he's been bringing back from the hunt! He could sell them to the genetics corps for a fortune!"

Dearing bowed his head. "Shit," he muttered, then looked up. "You really think he's here for eggs or something?"

I sighed. "All I'm saying is…well, it's suspicious. I don't trust him. He says he's ex-army, that he retired. Do you believe him?"

"Shit, no. Closest he could get to the army is getting kicked out of the recruitment office."

"Right. I just don't think he's being entirely open with us. We should find out more about him."

There was a sudden distant gunshot, and a few miles ahead of us birds scattered from the treetops. Dearing fumbled for his binoculars and looked into the distance. There was a short burst of gunfire, and a roar. Another shot.

"Sounds like someone's having fun," said Dearing bitterly. He peered through the binoculars again. "They just brought down a carnotaur at the river. And a parasaur. Look at that." There was a sharp edge to his voice.

I fiddled with the large fern leaf tied to the railings, before sighing and dragging the long-ranged telescope out of its case on the floor. I spread out the tripod and affixed the scope, peering through.

"Where?" I said.

"Down by the river, in that swampy area. The palm grove."

I saw shifting shapes in the lens, and focused the telescope until I could clearly see the hunters, though not who they were, spreading out around the thrashing corpse.

Dearing exhaled slowly. "They're taunting us. Bastards."

There was something there in his voice, in the way he moved. Anger, maybe, or more likely hunger. And when I looked at his eyes, that's what I saw – hunger, and hate.

_A strange dream. I was in a Vietnam movie, cruising down a river in a plastic patrol boat. And Dearing's there too, leaning back on his M60 in the bow of the boat, smoking passing civilian boats._

"_Hey Long!" he said. "You see that? Pop his head right off! Boom! Just like that!"_

_He swivelled and fired a burst into the nearest sampan. It exploded instantly, in a snap, boom, just like in a cartoon. The flaming wreck drifted on down the river, to join the inferno behind us._

_Dearing laughed. "Welcome to the jungle!" he said, spreading his arms wide._

It was the next day when Marlow, keeping watch in the high hide while me and Dearing let loose some pent-up aggression on some tin cans at an improvised firing range near the stream bed, spotted the boat returning. I saw the flashing light from the stream-bed. We were using signalling mirrors until we could get some radios. I didn't know Morse code, but knew instantly that something had happened. And I knew what it was too – Blake and Denver had just got back from their shopping trip.

We raced back through the fields, now completely cleared, and climbed the winding path up the hill. I stopped to look over towards the river, and saw from my vantage point that someone was already humping equipment ashore from the rubber dinghies. I scrambled to the top of the hill.

Blake was up there in the middle of a ring of soldiers, handing out small items from a crate. I pushed my way in to where a Coles was reading a newspaper, several others craning their necks to read. I looked over his shoulder.

'War in Kazakhstan seems certain', read the headline. There was a picture of a family huddling before a US soldier, and smoke in the background. I began to read over Cole's shoulder. I shouldered through the throng, gathered an armful of magazines and retreated to sit in a quiet corner of the communal tent, reading them all carefully and with interest. Dearing plopped down next to me and leaned over to read.

"That's fucked up," he said. I hadn't told him about the dream.

"What?"

"I said it's fucked up. The papers. We're going to war over sketchy rumours of soviet missiles?" He sighed. "And look at this. Taxes up. Left-wing protesters arrested. Like I said, the world is fucked up."

I looked at him, surprised. "Never knew you were so concerned, Dearing. It's always been like this."

"I guess I'm just used to living away from it all now, huh?"

I went back to reading my magazine. I read with interest of the sports results, reader's letters, little pointless things that just provided glimpses of what was going on perhaps a thousand miles away.

All in all, the items brought back included extra ammo, food, beer, much-needed snack bars, two extra M-60s to be fixed to one of the sandbag walls and to the high hide, books, newspapers and magazines, twelve short-wave radio packs and a central receiver, alcohol, cigarettes, waterproofing for the tents, picks and shovels, a golfing flag, more deck chairs, more folding tables, a spare tent, personal supplies for everyone, a new camping stove, more camo netting, a couple of communal walkmans, signal flares, tranquillisers and medical supplies, paraffin for the stoves, what seemed like a thousand packets of crop seeds to grow in the fields, and, most surprisingly, two laser-guided anti-tank missile launchers with three missiles each. The latter were, in Blake's words, "In case we ever need to take down some fat motherfuckin' T-Rex."

But the weirdest thing they had acquired was revealed with the third and final boat trip.

"Are you serious?" I said.

"That's right," said Dearing, poking his head through the tent door. "One hundred kilograms of weed."

"This I've got to see," I muttered.

It was true. A wooden freight palette with holes for forklift prongs bore the weight of hundreds of clear plastic bags, with a small amount of earth in each bearing the roots of a tiny marijuana bush. They were piled haphazardly on top of the palette. There was also a packing crate with some sacks in it. They looked like rice sacks, but I guessed they were the seeds of something quite different.

"Holy shit," I breathed. "That is a lot of weed."

Hannigan walked round the pile. "That's right," he said. "And you can plant it this afternoon."

A field had been specially prepared for the grass farm. Apparently if we planted these shrublings, they'd begin to re-produce and we'd have our own self-sustaining weed plantation. All I can say is it was hard work. We had to bend down in the burning early afternoon sun and get our hands dirty planting the things in neat rows. It was just me and Dearing doing it while everyone else had fun somewhere else. We got all the shit details because the CO hated us. If the lot wasn't planted by sundown there would be trouble. The work was especially hard with my leg.

My radio beeped.

"Why the fuck do we need this much weed, over?" said Dearing's voice, distorted by the tinny speakers, with that faint raising of tone on the 'over'. He himself was on the other side of the field, which although not too far away to shout, was certainly far enough away to give us an excuse to play with out new toys. We had agreed to say 'over' after every sentence, to maintain clarity. It sounded cool too.

I detached the radio from my belt and held it to my mouth. I was squinting in the bright sunlight even with sunglasses on. My top was hung around my midriff. It was damn hot. I depressed the transmit button.

"We do smoke a lot, Dearing," I said, squishing a cigarette end under my boot even as I did it. "And I mean a lot. Believe me because I had to scrape up all the ash from every joint smoked in the communal tent yesterday, over."

"This much? Over."

"Well no, not this much. I think in terms of pure biomass here we rival even Woodstock. Perhaps Hannigan wants some for his private stash? Over."

"Wouldn't put it past him. Out."

This conversation brought the subject of Hannigan to the forefront of my thoughts. He was up to something, that much was certain. I wandered what to do. Maybe I'd search his tent. Perhaps I would follow him in secret next time he went hunting near the labs. In fact, the more I thought about this idea, the more I liked it. I started forming plans in my head, imagining myself catching Hannigan and treating him to stern justice, then returning and pretending the raptors got him. For a while it distracted me from the back-breaking work.

That night, me and Dearing were just returning from our work when we heard shouting from the top of the hill. We raced upwards, ready to protect the camp, but when I crested the beak and burst into the centre of the camp, gun at the ready, I stopped dead.

On one side, Denver and some others were struggling to restrain a furious Hannigan. His hat was nowhere to be seen and his lip was bleeding, his teeth clenched. He was screaming curses at the top of his lungs, raking the dirt with thrashing feet.

On the other side Blake was in much the same position, his shirt ripped and a blue bruise spreading across his forehead. He, too, was bellowing obscenities and barely being held back by the crowd. Clark was in the middle, trying to separate them, but both kept escaping and colliding like two freight trains.

There was a lot of shouting from all concerned.

I grabbed Coles' shoulder, span him round to face me. "What's happening?" I screamed above the noise.

"What does it look like?" he shouted.

"Why are they fighting?" I yelled, seeing Dearing join the fray.

"Dominance of the pack!"

"What?"

"Two alpha males fighting for dominance!"

"What are you talking about?"

"You're a fucking cliché, Han!" screamed Blake. "A walking cliché! You fucking redneck piece of shit!" With that he plunged back into the fight and an almighty scuffle developed between Han and his supporters, and Blake and _his_ supporters. I pulled Dearing out of it and led him and Coles away from the fight.

"How did this start?" I asked, not bothering to conceal my exasperation.

"Blake felt Han wasn't showing him enough respect. Hannigan made some rude remarks. The rest is history," laughed Coles. "You know what people are like."

I nodded. Get two proud alpha males together and you never know what'll happen.

"Was Hannigan drinking?" said Dearing, wiping blood from his forehead.

"Like a fish. Think we should stop them?"

I didn't answer, and instead raised my gun and fired a single shot into the air. The fighting stopped abruptly, the combatants comically paused in the act of strangling or punching each other.

"Guys?" I said in a loud voice. "Chill?"

Hannigan and Blake were the first to get up, glared at each other, then stormed off in opposite directions. Moments later everybody else rose, dusted themselves down, exchanged guilty glances of embarrassment and slouched off, following either Blake or Han.

Coles shook his head. "I think this place is really getting to them," he said.


	9. Border Patrol

_23/01/08_

_It has been a long time since I even logged in. Well, I was looking back through this story. It's not great, but surprisingly tolerable. And I realised something strange - a chapter was missing all along, and nobody noticed. So here it is, reinserted two years or so after the fact. Chance old fans who happen upon this update might want to re-read the way through again - think of it as the Redux version._

* * *

**VIII: Border Patrol**

**Day 107**

**0621 hours**

"_See that?" shouted Dearing, pointing down at the tangle of tiny rivers and streams spread out over the basin. "Fuckin' VC all over that area."_

_I leaned further out of the helicopter, to get a better view. The wind whistled around me "Lizard activity?"_

"_Lizard central. You see that one there? There's a village around two kliks down there. Here." He passed me a pair of binoculars. Steadying myself against the metal doorframe, feeling the vibrations of the engine through the chassis. I peered through the binocs._

"_There!" yelled Dearing, pointing. There was a convoy of boats crawling along the river, like tiny beetles on the floor of some lofty room. "There's Hannigan's team! Oh-five hundred, they come in on that village. Our job is to swoop down and give the enemy a nasty surprise. Clear?"_

"_Clear," I said. Dearing grinned as the helicopter tilted, and started its approach. I grabbed the mounted gun and position my thumb over the firing studs._

"_Lock and load, motherfuckers!" screamed Dearing._

* * *

The next morning, there had been a new announcement.

'IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Alpha Squad: Hannigan, Denver, Smith

Bravo Squad: Blake, Clark, Medina, Bradley

Charlie Squad: Dearing, Long, Coles, Marlow'

Someone had been a naughty boy. Blake had been bumped down to Bravo Squad. Obviously this was due to the fight the previous night. My theory had been confirmed when Hannigan emerged from his tent to be met with a glowering stare from Blake, sharpening his knife on a deckchair next to the hardware tent. Looks can't kill, but I damn near believed that one could.

Everybody else had innocently gotten on with their work while Hannigan walked slowly toward Blake. As he passed, everyone in sight had paused in their duties and held their breaths. Hannigan had nodded and then strode on, sped up, and passed into the hardware tent. This was followed by a collective sigh of relief.

That was over two weeks ago, and the two still weren't talking. Blake hated Hannigan and Hannigan hated Blake, and whenever the two met there was trouble. Blake was seriously pissed off at having been replaced by Smith and cold-shouldered by Hannigan so he took his anger out on me and Dearing. Tensions in the camp were high, especially with Smith having been promoted to Alpha squad and sneering at the Charlies. There had been plenty of fights over that. All in all, we were in a fucking mess, with still no news from the world outside which I found myself thinking of as High Command.

The constant forced marches, the sporadic firefights, the inhuman jungles were taking their toll. Sometimes I wondered whether it would be our enemies or our COs and their bullshit that would get us killed.

This was the shape of things to come. Already I relished the opportunity to see the outside world, through books, through newspapers. The last time Blake and Denver had taken a trip to the mainland, I had found myself waiting for them to be back. The news from outside was tragic, and sometimes a little disturbing. It seemed to bother Dearing.

I didn't know it then, but within 24 hours, the situation would worsen. It was the day before the first attack.

At least I was free at last – my leg had mostly healed and although technically I should have kept it on for a couple more weeks, Clark had seen how much I wanted and needed to get out on active duty again, so the cast had come off yesterday. I still felt occasional twangs of pain when I walked, but it was a small price to pay.

When I checked my orders after waking I found I was on morning recon in the northeast. After consulting the map this turned out to be a long ridge around the south of the river valley, a tarmac service road winding along the spine, a few bunkers and storage buildings. I sucked in air. At last, something interesting to do. But I knew the place had been checked out before by another squad and there was little chance of hostile activity– this was just to keep us busy. Yes, we were still getting the shit details.

I gathered my equipment, grouped up with Dearing, Coles and Marlow, and we set out towards the river valley. For some reason the rest of Charlie Squad saw me as an unofficial leader. Don't ask me why. As 'leader', then, I planned to cross the river south of the valley then find the road and follow it until it veered off towards the lab. Then we would trek the short distance back to camp. Mission accomplished, home in time for lunch. I liked going In Country, outside of the base camp's perimeter, even when we were retracing someone else's steps.

The rain was depressing. I knew we were in the tropics and that meant that although the last three or four months we had had perfect weather, it would now rain for another four. It was the wet season, and the patter and drumming of raindrops on leaves almost drowned out the jungle animals. Where there were no trees there was no cover, just water with breathing spaces. And even here, in the forest, torrents of water poured down on us from leaves specially designed by nature to let rain dribble off them. Mother nature can be a real bitch.

An hour later and we were even wetter, because we were standing still on the bank of a normally stagnant stream now swelled by the torrential downpour. Coles was using his raincoat to try and shelter our map. The shortcomings of paper as a hardwearing jungle material had never been more apparent. I peered at the wet and steadily disintegrating sheet.

Clark was bobbing uncertainly around us while Dearing was smoking – sorry, trying to smoke – between the roots of an enormous tree, each one the size of a pickup truck. In the last few weeks he had become very quiet, and very moody. He snapped when I tried to talk to him, and talked in his sleep. Every time I looked at him I saw something I didn't like.

"Here," I said, poking the wet map with a finger. "I think we're here."

"How the hell can you know that?"

"I don't. Which way's east?"

Clark scrabbled in his pockets and fumbled with his pocket compass and then gestured vaguely to our left.

I folded up the map and stuffed it into my breast pocket. I tightened my own raincoat around my shoulders. "The way I see it," I said, "if we keep going east we'll get to the road eventually."

Coles shrugged. His moustache was dripping wet. We set out in an east-ish direction.

I let him and Marlow pull ahead of us and fell back to walk alongside Dearing. He didn't look at me, and instead fiddled with his gun and twitched his hand.

"Dearing," I said quietly. He didn't respond. "Dearing?"

He blinked. "Jesus, _what?_ I'm trying to think!"

I sighed. "Dearing, you need to pay attention. We're in country."

"Yeah."

"You need to calm down."

"Yeah.

"You need to be alert."

"Fucking yes!"

I stopped him with my hand on his shoulder . "You're on the edge. Could you just-"

Didn't turn. "Just what?"

I reconsidered my strategy. "Listen, man, I know how you feel-"

In an instant he whirled to face me, and pushed me up against a tree. "You fucking don't," he snarled. "You know what it feels like? They're coming apart into angles and they won't let you because that other, it hates you and they all want you dead! Do you have any idea where you are, Long? Tell me!"

I grabbed his hands and slowly eased them away from me. Again, there it was in his eyes, a hunger, a savagery about him. I stared at him. He was shaking.

"Dearing," I said. "You're not alone. I understand-"

"Don't fucking give me that shrink bullshit! I'll-"

He realised there was something sharp and metal sticking into his stomach. It was my gun.

"Dearing," I said quietly. "I don't need this. Calm down. Relax. Stop flipping out. Right?"

Hunger in his eyes. It was gone in a blink.

"Right?" I said, louder.

I felt his tense muscles relax, and he backed off, and screwed his eyes up tight. He looked upwards, letting water dribbled on his face and down his cheeks. He opened his eyes again and gasped, blinking rapidly. Then he leaned back against a tree.

"Right," he said. "Right. Jesus, Long. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Ah, fuck. Look, I'm stressed out. I haven't smoked in days, this fucking rain…"

I sighed. He was right. I hadn't been able to light a cigarette and it was fraying my nerves. He cracked a smile, the first in days. I expected a ray of sunlight to lance through the thick rain clouds and through the jungle canopy and illuminate him, a glimpse of happiness in the storm. It didn't. The rain just drove on relentlessly, and soaked his bandana.

"Come on," I said. "Let's catch up with the others. Just don't freak out on me."

He stood to attention and gave a mock salute. "Sir, yes sir." The old Dearing, back from the dead for a moment.

"Oh, and Dearing?" I said, thumbing the switch on my shotgun.

"Yeah?"

"The safety was on."

* * *

When we got to the roadway the ground was so wet that it was better to walk on the tarmac, in the open, than risk our boots to the sucking mud. We tramped along the road, avoiding the cracks where plants had pushed through. On our left, the massive cliffs loomed above us. On our right, a tangle of electric fence lined the road. On both sides, there were dilapidated road signs, marking where the road ended and the forest began.

Now and then we came to low concrete structures, somewhat like little pillboxes. When we checked inside we found they were maintenance stations for the electric fences. There was nothing of interest in them, but when the rain suddenly started coming down even harder we decided to take shelter in one for a while.

Despite our little talk, Dearing was still restless. We were huddled inside one of the bunkers. I gazed out of the tiny slit of a window that overlooked the river valley. Coles and Medina were talking in lowered voices, chatting about the lizards. As I watched the herbivores, apparently unperturbed by the rain, I realised I felt much the same as Dearing.

"Hey, I'm just gonna go outside for a moment," he said.

I turned. "You don't need to go for a piss, do you? Because you know, you can tell us these things."

He didn't laugh. "Look, I need some fresh air."

I shrugged, and turned back to the window. He walked out.

"I heard there's heavy lizard activity in Sector 7 East," said Marlow.

"Fuckin' A," said Coles.

The first sign that something was wrong was when he didn't come back after half an hour. The rain was getting worse and worse, but I had realised we needed to get back to the camp regardless. We were preparing to leave and stealing ourselves for a dash into the trees.

I poked my head out of the bunker door, feeling raindrops hammering on my helmet. "Where the hell is Dearing?" I said.

Coles peered out the window. "I don't see him," he said slowly.

I banged my head against the wall. "Oh Jesus. Don't tell me he's wandered off."

Marlow sighed. "Don't we need to go and find him?" he said. Coles looked worried.

"Shit,_shit!_" I said through gritted teeth. "We're going to have to go out and look for him, if he runs into trouble he won't last five minutes. Never leave a man behind. Shit." Coles groaned but nevertheless we stepped out into the downpour.

"Jesus! Fucking wet!" he shouted above the noise. Marlow began to hum annoyingly.

I looked around for a sign as to where Dearing had gone. There was a footprint in the mud on the side of the road, and the others had been washed away by the rain. I dashed into the relative shelter of the jungle, and studied the print. It was pointing towards the fence. It must have been Dearing's. Nobody else was out here, were they?

I turned to Coles and Marlow. "You two," I said. "Spread out along the electric fence, cover and sweep! See if you can find a place where he went through! I'll look around!"

The two nodded and fanned out to the left and right. Meanwhile I scrabbled on the ground for another print, finding only a slight depression that might or might not have been one. I searched in vain for scraps of clothing torn off on sharp twigs or places where the undergrowth had parted with Dearing's passage. I found nothing

The radio on my belt beeped. "Charlie One, this is Bravo Base, what's the holdup? You were meant to report in oh-five ago, please respond, over?"

I raised the handset. "Charlie One here, we have one MIA, repeat, one MIA, over."

"Please state your position, Charlie One," the radio squawked.

"West Road North, Sector 9 North, over."

"Roger that. Find that man immediately, soldier. We have no forces currently in that area so you're on your own, over?"

"Roger. Over and out."

Just as I had started to give up, I heard Marlow shout. Coles came running and together we jogged over to where we had heard the sound. Marlow was crouched atop the concrete shoulder of the fence, gesturing to a hole in it. We crouched next to him.

"It looks like this is where he pushed through!" said Marlow. "There are prints on the other side! We press on?"

I nodded and all of us climbed through the hole in the fence. On the other side the air was thick with sulphur smoke. We thought we must be near the volcanic beds and sure enough, after following Dearing's muddy footprints for less than ten minutes the trees began to thin and ground level vegetation disappeared. Up ahead, a crater in the ground belched fumes. The ground was hot underfoot.

Coles went ahead. The mud was basalt grey now instead of earthy brown. There were craters and cracks in the land everywhere, steam curling into the rainy air. The footprints meandered between craters and then continued onto open ground. Here be geysers.

When a crater to our left suddenly erupted in a tower of moisture and showered us with boiling hot spray I yelped with surprise. Marlow fell over. As quickly as it had begun the eruption stopped, and steam filled the air. Marlow got up, sheepishly.

Here the prints stopped. There were no trees here so either they had been washed away by the pounding rain or by the spewing geysers. To our right, another jet of spray shot up, and then another ahead of us. The geyser field continued for at least half a mile all around us.

"Where to now?" shouted Coles, trying to make himself heard above the roaring and gurgling.

"Shit, I don't know!" I screamed. "Let's just keep on going forward! We might pick up the trail once we're back in the jungle!"

Within a few minutes that ceased to be necessary. We were halfway across the field when a gunshot rang out.

"Dearing!" I shouted. "It's him!" And I started to sprint towards the tree line ahead, ignoring the waterspouts. I slipped and slid on the sodden ash, and when there was a second shot I ran onwards into the jungle. Thoughts ran through my head, none of them good. Had he been ambushed? Gone AWOL? Gone insane?

A third shot. I followed it and angled right between volcanic craters. Behind me Marlow shouted something. Two more shots, and I realised I was very close now. With a final effort I crashed through wet ferns and ran right into Dearing.

He yelled but it was too late and I crashed right into him. We both fell to the ground but he was up in moments and turned away from me, his gun at the ready.

"Dearing!" I said. "What the hell are you doing?"

He looked back behind him, down, at me. I got to my feet shakily, rubbing my head. He pointed ahead of him. I stood beside him, and saw what he was pointing his gun at.


	10. Killing Time

_I don't own Jurassic Park._

* * *

**IX: Killing Time**

**Day 107**

**1424 hours**

We stood on the lip of a small basin, churning mud at the bottom and smoke drifting over. But in the middle of it there was a raptor, thrashing around on its side but seemingly unable to get up. When it saw me, it hissed, and stopped thrashing.

"Why-" I began to say to Dearing, but then I saw. There was a long knife stuck into its left leg, just above the kneecap, and there were bullet holes in its thigh and tail. Nevertheless it was convulsing wildly on the ground. Dearing started to walk down the slope towards it and stood triumphantly, but keeping his distance.

Behind us I heard Coles and Marlow catch up but I ignored them. I just looked at Dearing.

He was grinning ear to ear. "That showed you, didn't it?" he said, gasping. "Motherfuckers. You thought I couldn't do it?" He laughed hoarsely. "Hey Long! Look!"

He turned to face me, his eyes gleaming. "What did you do to it?" I asked.

But Dearing wasn't listening. He waved his M60. "You know what this is?" he said, apparently to the raptor. "You know what this is, lizard? You do, don't you?"

He cocked his gun with a loud clack, and pointed it directly at the raptor. In the blink of eye it was still, unmoving, staring directly into the barrel of the gun. It hissed, then started to squirm backwards away from it.

Dearing looked at me. "They learn!" he said, his voice breathless. "They know what a gun is. See?"

He whirled back and aimed at the raptor once again. It drew away, hissing and gibbering. I could tell it was really pissed off, but scared. A raptor? Scared?

Marlow started to walk closer to it, but it lashed out with a viciously clawed hindlimb and he jumped backwards. Coles stood next to Dearing.

"Fucking A'," he said. "Nice job, man. We gonna kill it now?"

Dearing looked puzzled. "No…" he said slowly. "No, we're taking this thing alive. Get some intelligence. Long, you've got some tranquillisers, don't you?"

I did. I carried a little medical kit around with me for emergencies. But I felt reluctant to give the syringe to Dearing. "Come on, man," he said. "Gimme the needle." I unpacked the kit and passed it to him.

"Now," he said to the raptor, twirling the syringe. "Hold still, you bastard. Guys, restrain it."

Apprehensive, I approached. As a little experiment, I waved my gun back and forth. The raptor's head followed it, like a snake following a charmer's pipe. Coles and Marlow moved up on the flanks, their rifles poised. The raptor looked quickly from the mouth of one gun to the next. It screamed and tried to move away but we encircled it. Dearing edged closer and suddenly lunged, stabbing the needle deep into its tail. It twisted round and slashed at his leg, drawing blood, but Dearing was already diving backwards. He slid across the ground and came to a stop. The raptor yowled, then started to make odd, clipped yelping noises.

"Shit," said Dearing, clutching at his leg. "It's calling for help."

But the tranquilliser was already taking effect. I saw its pupils dilate and its breathing become shallow. Within minutes it had lost consciousness and lay still. Nobody wanted to waste time so we all lifted it as quickly as possible and carried it between us. As we hurried away, there was a screech in the distance.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck, why the hell are we doing this?" muttered Coles. He was panicking.

"Come on, just move," I grunted. We started to run.

Marlow had sprayed strong-smelling insect repellent across our tracks to disguise the smell, and we when we got to a river we crossed into it and waded down it, leaving no footprints. As we trekked back to base camp lugging the drugged raptor with us, I hoped it would be enough. The more I thought about it, the more I realised this was incredibly stupid. We couldn't be sure the raptors wouldn't follow us and find out where our camp was.

Dearing was happy, at least. "This'll show 'em," he kept saying, grinning all the time. "Fuckers." I assumed he was talking about the raptors.

The river was shallow but it was still unpleasant. It was quite wet enough without having to plod along knee-deep in cold water for hours. I knew that following any running water on the island would, if you went downstream, eventually lead you to the river delta. And I knew the delta like the back of my hand.

One thing I was slowly and grudgingly becoming aware of is that we would have to tell Hannigan why we were going to be late. They might even be searching for us, which was not a happy thought. I tried to think up a cover story.

"Okay," I said thoughtfully. "We tell them Dearing was attacked by raptors, and when we found him he had captured a raptor alive. Then we rushed back to base. How about it?"

"Sounds good enough to me," said Coles.

"Hmm," murmured Dearing. "I like it."

When we tramped back into base at 5:20 in the afternoon there was a huge furore over the live raptor. Denver, Bradley and Clark were amazed and extremely impressed. Blake was quietly approving, which was compliment indeed seeing as he hated our guts. Medina and Clark were not happy, but amused nonetheless. Smith was jealous. And, predictably, Hannigan was angry.

"Do you have any idea how stupid this is?" he growled upon seeing the drugged raptor. But I had been ready for it.

"Chill, Han," I said, as respectfully as I could. "We covered our tracks, they can't track us."

"Bringing a live one in here? What if it escapes?"

"It's not going to escape, Han."

"Oh? Are you the CO here suddenly?"

I sighed. "No, Han. But didn't Sun-Tzu say 'know your enemy'?"

He chewed his cigar violently. "I don't give a fuck about fucking Sun-Tzu! We'll keep the thing, because we can't do anything else. But don't expect a fucking medal from me!"

With that, he stormed off into his tent, evidently disgruntled. Beside me, Dearing sniggered. Blake laid a hand one hand on his shoulder and one on mine.

"Nice job, guys," he said, smirking. "Nice job."

Clark kept giving the thing tranquillisers to keep it asleep while the rest of us set to work digging a deep pit, fifteen feet wide and twelve feet deep. With everybody helping it wasn't long before the pit was finished and I laid down my shovel. We planted a sturdy metal pegs in the base of it and then carefully lowered the raptor down. Its eye was still open, and it wasn't completely asleep. It blinked, slowly, and stared accusingly at me. The corner of its lip lifted up in a half-hearted snarl.

Denver retrieved some heavy chains and metal cables (originally for the high hide) from the hardware shed and we lashed the raptor securely around both legs and its neck, binding it to the pegs. It could move around within the pit, but it couldn't jump or escape.

"Won't it dig the pegs out or something?" I said. "Or bite through the chains?"

"Perhaps," said Blake. "But we're placing mines."

As if on cue, Denver and Marlow appeared holding a crate of Claymore mines. They were green and square, with the legend 'front toward enemy' in yellow writing on the curved face of them. The mines were planted in the sides of the pit near the top, the writing facing across the shaft. Tripwires were stretched across. If the raptor tried to jump up, it would be perforated by around five hundred ball bearings propelled outwards with explosive forces. Finally, our work done, we stepped back from the edge of the pit and looked down onto out captive.

"Welcome to your new home, bitch," said Dearing.

After which, there was a party. Everyone except Hannigan and Smith was elated by the capture of the raptor. There was a lot of drinking, and a lot of smoking. Blake seemed to finally accept Dearing and me as real men, and Dearing seemed unusually happy throughout the evening. Clark, while seemingly disapproving, secretly congratulated Dearing. Now, he said, he would be able to study the dinosaurs' physiology in depth.

In truth, I don't think anyone cared about the event in terms of learning more about our foes. It was a victory, a triumph over the enemy. Considering the current mood of distrust and depression, it was just what we needed. Everything seemed to be looking up – even I was able to dismiss the thought of the rest of the pack, following our trail, prowling towards our base even now, to the back of my mind. I even forgot about what Dearing had said that echoed my own feelings. We partied into the night. Eventually, everyone wandered back independently to their own tents.

The euphoria didn't last long.

I couldn't sleep that night. Planes and helicopters kept roaring overhead, and in the background there was a constant stutter of machineguns. I was worried. I knew that there were no helicopters, no machineguns, no bombings. Why did I keephearingthem? Outside, nearby, the was the whistle and the boom of a mortar shell falling.

_I was breathing heavily. Charlie was out there, somewhere. I peered carefully between fern fronds, scanned the valley ahead of us. I was confident that we were well hidden enough, and that our camouflage was immaculate. _

_I suddenly caught glimpse of something scuttling across ground in front of us. Through the lenses of my binoculars it turned out to be a man in a paddy hat, AK hanging loosely from his gangly arms, hunched over and running as fast as he could across the scorched battleground._

"_Contact, five hundred metres, big tree on the left," I muttered._

"_Got him," said Dearing. Beside me, he adjusted a tiny dial on the scope of his sniper rifle, and squinted through the lens. "Now?"_

_I checked the binoculars again. "Yeah, drill him."_

_Dearing fired, the rifle jumping backwards in his hands, sharp crack. The man dropped – just like that. Dearing and I exchanged high fives._

_Suddenly the trees on the opposite side of the valley were crashing down, and tanks were emerging from the forests, bulldozing vegetation. Swarms of Vietcong dashed between the caterpillar tracks._

_"Uh-oh," murmured Dearing._

_I spoke to the radio, not taking my eyes off the scene ahead. The tanks bulldozed through a ruined church. "Almighty, this is Wildcat two, need air support on the valley ASAP, multiple hostiles inc heavy armour incoming, over."_

_A screaming sound overhead. "Roger that, Wildcat two. Let's smoke the motherfuckers, over."_

_And the entire valley erupted, the tanks and the men blown apart by gouts of flame, the smoke coiling from the backwash and climbing into the sky, the screaming jets rushing guiltily away from the scene. Heat haze descended, and Dearing climbed out of the foxhole and began to dance among the flames._

_"Don't you just love the smell of napalm in the morning?" he said._

I awoke extremely early the next morning – or was it that I hadn't even gone to sleep? It didn't matter. I tried for an hour to get back to sleep but I couldn't lie still. The hangover hadn't yet kicked in, and I decided to take my chances with the lizards and go take a walk in the fresh air while I still felt able to.

Outside my tent the sky was still dark, but in the east pale light was beginning to break through the cloudbanks. The rain had slackened, if not stopped. The air was fresh and clear and cold, a light breeze blowing in my hair. It was a pleasant awakening from the warm, drowsy aftertaste of the party.

Smith was sitting against a sandbag wall. One arm rested on a mounted M60. His head wobbled uncertainly, and he was mumbling to himself. Either he was drunk or he was stoned. Or both.

"Hey…hey…you…hey…" he said indistinctly as I approached.

"Hello Smith," I said, walking past him.

"Hey…no…hey…I wanna…yeah," he slurred.

"Smith," I sighed. "Shut up."

"I want to…sorry for the…yeah."

I stopped.

"I called you a coward. Heh. We're all scared, Long. We're all scared…all of us…"

"That's okay, Smith," I said. "You just rest now."

"All of us…I'm scared, Long. But you…you brought it back. You are a…stupid. Stupid fucker, Long, stupid. It'll kill. It'll rip out your…thing. Throat. Oh…Blake went out. He went out…thought you should know."

I sighed and left him murmuring away into the darkness, walked the path down the hill and admired the dawn sky. Little dark blue clouds scudded across it, while directly over my head there was a solid grey mass. A nearby palm tree bent in the wind. I had long since gotten used to the fact that my boots were full of water. I didn't notice it anymore. So Blake had taken a morning walk as well? I doubted I'd meet him.

I strolled along into the scrub, between bushes and stumpy trees. Soon, I passed into the thicker jungle east of the river delta, humming in the rain. I was thinking. Up until now, I had almost been on the point of flipping out, just like Dearing had. I was sidelined by the other squads, taunted, downtrodden. I had wanted to get out of the rut. Now it was better, with the raptor thing, but…

I was so deep in thoughts I hadn't noticed I was lost until my foot splashed down into an unfamiliar stream. I looked around. I didn't recognise the scenery one bit. Immediately I flicked into survival mode, began to panic, ducked behind a tree trunk and pressed my back against the bark. I counted to ten. After a few seconds, I managed to control myself and decided to climb a tree to get a view of my surroundings. There was gnarled, twisted fig plant skeleton tree nearby. A memory of a school lesson came back to me, a relic of a world that was no longer relevant. Strangler figs were parasites, I recalled, and would grow on the trunk of bigger trees until they encased the tree utterly. Eventually the tree would die leaving only the structure the strangler fig had built around it.

I clawed my way up the strangler skeleton, and around thirty metres up, just when I was starting to get dizzy, I emerged from the leafy embrace of the canopy. Rain and wind whipped my face.

Stupid, stupid. The camp was less than a mile away, to the south-west (it was opposite the rising sun). Sighing with relief I slithered down to ground level and set off back towards home.

I must have gone in slightly the wrong direction, because I found something I hadn't passed on the way out. I pushed my way into a particularly dense thicket of ferns and low-lying cycads. When I came out of the other side, I actually gasped at what I saw. Just think about that for a second. When was the last time you actually gasped?

It was Blake. There he was, in his combat gear, his mouth gaping wide open and his eyes empty, staring into oblivion. He was hanging upside down from a rope noose that had tightened around his foot, and his torso was pockmarked with crimson craters. Bullet holes, all over his chest. He was quite obviously dead.

Don't get me wrong here. I wasn't a stranger to death. Others had fallen to the jungle but I hadn't been there to smell the reek of their fluids and see their bodies cut to pieces. I hadn't been close to them, literally or metaphorically, before or after they died. And they had been killed by dinosaurs. Blake hadn't.

I looked at his face. There was an expression of pain on it, and blood was dripping from his mouth, his nose, his eyes. Flies were already buzzing around him, and crawling on his skin. Gingerly, I touched his bloodstained shirt. The blood was fresh, and still warm.

I sucked in breath. "Oh, Jesus," I said aloud.

Someone had set a rope trap, and he had stepped in it. When they returned to find him ensnared in their rope, they had riddled him with bullets.

My first thought was: what the hell is going on here? There isn't meant to be anyone else on this island.

And then I thought: exactly. There is no one else on this island.

In a daze, I cut him loose with my knife and searched around the scene for any clues. But I was no detective, and I found nothing, not even any footprints. I had to keep rushing back to his body to keep the flies off. Painfully aware that the stench of his blood, which was now all over the forest floor, would draw predators, I gave up and swung the body across my shoulders.

When I got back to the camp, everybody was already awake and getting ready for the day. I walked through them, and as I did I was aware of a hushed silence descending, as cold as cancer, as calm as death. I didn't notice. I walked forward in slow motion, while everything else rotated around me, another world. Perhaps, from all the shit I had ingested last night, I was finally crashing. I dropped Blake's body on a table in the centre of the camp.

"Long?" said someone behind me. "What happened?"

"…killed him," I managed. I felt a little sick. "Someone…"

I sat down heavily on the ground next to the body. Its head lolled as I bumped it with my foot. Everyone was talking, someone was shouting for Clark, and figures flashed and blurred around me.

In the haze of faces I saw one that was quite still. Hannigan stood straight ahead of me, motionless, wide-eyed. He took his hat off.

Someone had killed Blake, shot him. Hunted him. Who? Why? I didn't know.

"Fucking gooks," said Dearing.

Clark was bending over the body, checking it. He raised his head, his face grave. "He's dead," he said quietly.

"He's dead." The most stupid and idiotic statement I had ever heard. Way to state the fucking obvious. Of course he was dead. He had more holes in him than a Swiss cheese on a target range. But somehow, hearing a serious, calm voice confirm the fact chilled me to the bone.

And suddenly the sky was on fire, and the helicopters were overhead, and the dust clouds were choking me and blocking the sun, and I was there.

* * *

_Wow, reviews!_

_Mrs-Malcolm: Thanks. :)_

_Evilsloth: Ah, I can see why that might cause confusion. They're not ex-military (although their cheap equipment is). They're just a load of random guys who are bored with modern existence and decide to find a more interesting one._

_Autumn Darkness: I always thought yours was the one good teen-eric-romance stories. :D_

_Thanks once again to TinyXipe. To clarify: it's Long's imagination. You'll see the relevance at the end of this chapter. :)_

_I'd like to ask a question to allof you reading, on the subject of swearing. Does too much bother you? Should I tone down the language or keep the dial set to 'profane'? I noticed a lot of stories in this section were pretty clean language-wise. What do you think?_


	11. Paranoia

**X: Paranoia**

**Day 113**

**0930**

In the end, we buried Blake on the other hill where Ellis too lay resting, covered in long elephant grass, west of the base camp, where Blake had always gone when he wanted to be alone. His gravestone was little more than a wooden cross, upon which we hung his rifle and his hat and his little crucifix pendant.

Clark had done the postmortem, which hadn't shown us much. It was obvious how he died, but the question everyone really wanted to know was who killed him. The bullets, which might have given a clue to whose weapon it was, turned out to be from one of the communal M16s. It belonged to no one, and we didn't have the equipment to check for fingerprints.

"We are gathered here today," said Hannigan had said, holding on to his hat in the wind and the rain, "to mourn the passing of…a good man."

We had been huddled around the grave, which was filling up with mud. The rain was torrential. The bible was sodden. Hannigan went on. This was the first time we had seen him shaken. His lip was quivering and his eyes were rimmed with red. He was practically shaking. None of us had ever seen anything affect him so much – he usually just brushed problems off. This was really tearing him up. He was one of those people, perhaps, who is more upset about the death of enemies than friends.

Blake got a typical funeral – he was a man who enjoyed the simple things, he worked hard, etc. To be honest I doubt he would have been happy with it. Afterwards Hannigan made a speech about how we all had to band together, be more careful, and defend against our enemy. He really thought that Blake had been killed by a completely different party on the island. That was what everyone said, but no-one believed it. Was it likely that there was anyone else here and we hadn't noticed? I didn't think so.

Who killed you, Blake, I was thinking. What happened out there?

The funeral had been two days ago. Now here I was. Not paying my respects, exactly, but simply visiting the grave because it was the kind of thing you did.

I was watching the hill far ahead of me. B-52 bombers had been bombarding it for the last five hours. Little puffs of fire and smoke kept appearing in the jungle, and didn't seem to do anything except raise clouds of birds and leave smoke plumes to mark where the bombs had fallen. As I watched, a half-dozen helicopters scudded past. I'm hallucinating, I thought.

"What the hell are you staring at, Long?" asked Coles.

I turned to him. "Can't you see it?" I said, exasperated.

"Come on, Long. Let's go," said Coles, irritably. I sighed and followed him back down the hill into the jungle. I don't think he trusted me, and I hadn't ruled him out yet.

We got back to camp late, and thus were regarded with suspicious looks from all, like perhaps it was us who had killed Blake.

"Where the hell have you two been?" said Denver, looking up from his clipboard as he sprawled in a deck chair just to the side of the camp entrance.

"We've been at Blake's grave," I said. "You know, paying our respects?"

Denver regarded us suspiciously. "Oh really? Wasn't the funeral enough? Why were you out there?"

I ignored them and entered the communal tent, sitting down next to Dearing.

"So how was your day?" I said.

"Boring," said Dearing. I didn't press the issue. He looked tired. Even though he had caught the raptor, Hannigan still hated him. I think that damn near killed him. I remember him exploding into anger when Hannigan placed him once again on shit detail, with me. He wouldn't calm down for two days.

Across the table, Smith and Bradley were whispering furtively. Coles was talking rapidly with Marlow in the tent entrance, both in low voices. Medina was sitting in a dark corner, his eyes alert. Bradley and Clark came bustling in, plastic smiles plastered across their faces, with their usual pot of food which I knew would be fish stew without looking. It was served out and my guess was correct.

The tent was quiet as we ate. Normally it would be rowdy and excitable in there, while everybody let off steam and got drunk as a large group. Now there were little knots of two or three people huddled together, talking quietly. Me and Dearing were on our own.

Hooded eyes aimed furtive glances across the room, each man scanning his fellow. People sipped slowly at the hot stew. I glanced from face to dirty face. Medina was alone, which was suspicious in itself, but I didn't read too much into it. Bradley was too stupid to be a killer – or was that just an act?

Stupid. Perhaps too stupid to be true.

Okay, okay, maybe not. Coles. He was jumpy and irritable around Blake's grave, that seemed extremely strange to me. But what motive did he have? And he never went off alone. Smith had been jealous of Blake and I didn't put it past him to kill the guy. But no, Smith was too lazy.

Jesus! Stop it, Long. I slugged back a bottle of water in one go, screwing up my eyes. I needed clarity, not paranoid spy movie bullshit. Denver was the worst, quizzing everybody on what they had been doing or where they were every day, dissecting their activity every hour.

Yes, we huddled in small groups and whispered and muttered to each other and shot dirty looks at Denver. Who cared about the sharp teeth and claws lurking just beyond the edge of our senses when there was an altogether more frightening danger somewhere in our midst? I don't think that anyone save Hannigan believed that the killer was a separate party for one nanosecond.

After dinner was one hour of camp duties. I offered to guard the raptor.

I sat on a chair looking down into the raptor pit. The raptor just stared back up at me. It didn't even bother trying to escape. Didn't even blink.

"Stupid fucker," I said. It cocked its head, then gave a weird nasal whistle.

I wondered how they really communicated. Back at the labs I had heard them communicating with sounds, weird sequences of tapping noises. On the trail I swear I saw them use hand signals, body language. And then there were the strange, otherworldly screams and chuckles. How complex was their language?

"What are your plans, huh?" I asked. "Talk, bitch. Talk or I'll fuckin' smoke you."

The raptor didn't say anything, the stubborn bastard. Well, we would find ways of making it talk.

I sighed. Then I noticed something odd.

Medina was checking his gun. There was nothing weird about that in itself but the fact that he was clearly trying to hide his activity made me stop and watch. He noticed me looking at him and returned my stare. I broke off and looked down at the raptor. It snorted.

When I looked back up Medina had set off down an overgrown path, disappearing into the undergrowth.

* * *

I was woken by the whip and crack of distant detonations. The camp was still sleeping, but in the distance, the bombings were continuing. A sharp yellow light flashed through the tent canvas, and a moment later there was a boom. I burrowed further into my sleeping bag, and a spotlight passed overhead.

Rotor blades.

* * *

Coles approached me from a dark corner of the base camp. I hadn't even slept and had simply got up that morning, watched the sky turn from darkened velvet to a benign sheet of light from my position under the lip of the communal tent, sheltered from the rainfall. It wasn't a particularly pretty sunrise. You only get those in cities, where the air pollution filters the early morning light into bright colours.

The effect was of a bright spotlight pushing through the driving rain from the far-off horizon. Coles was sheltering in the shadow of the hardware shed. He spotted me and edged closer, hunching his back as if he thought it made him less obvious.

"Long," he hissed. "Long!"

I sighed. "Coles, don't whisper. We're the only ones here."

He straightened up. "Fine. Listen, I need to talk to you. You're aware that there's a spy amongst us, right?"

"Fucking gooks," I said.

"What? Ah - do you have any ideas about who it is?"

As it happened I had a few suspicions but I wasn't about to tell him. "No idea," I said passively.

"Have you considered Hannigan?"

I had. Hannigan was on an away trip, getting supplies, getting our orders from high command. He was also seeking out new recruits: we were getting seriously short-handed. Personally I couldn't wait for him to get back, not for the supplies but for the glimpses of life beyond the island he would surely bring back. The new guys might even be able to tell me what was going on out there. I thrilled at the idea.

Now, the thought of Hannigan as the murderer had crossed my mind before. I turned to him, raising an eyebrow in fake puzzlement. "The CO?" I said. "What do you mean?"

He bought it. "Think about it, Long. Him and Hannigan haven't exactly been on the best of terms! Hannigan killed him because he threatened his authority. Everyone liked Blake more anyway. Think about it!"

I think he really believed I hadn't considered the possibility, that he was being really smart. I decided to keep up the pretence that I didn't know anything.

"You're saying Hannigan is the one who killed Blake?" I said.

"That's it! That's exactly what I'm saying! Who else would do it?"

Who else indeed? Plenty of people, I thought. But there was a reason that I wasn't telling him anything I thought. The less he thought I knew, the better, and the more he might reveal to me of what he thought.

"I don't know," I said. "But Hannigan…it just doesn't make sense. I know he didn't like Blake, but he wouldn't kill his own people."

"If you think that then you're a fool, Long," said Coles, and slouched back to bed.

So long, sucker, I thought.

I sat under the lip of the communal tent, watching dirty raindrops splat on the canvas and then dribbled down over the edge to the ground for another hour. I watched a flock of Pteranodons circle over the forest. I watched the constant bombing. Beside me, a radio was blaring.

"-give a big hello to the boys in 30th company! Those marines have been working mighty hard in the Na Drang valley, so this song is for them!" On came the music.

* * *

_That night, I had a bad dream. I flashed back to when we were hunting raptors, me and Dearing and Hannigan. There we were, in the middle of the jungle. I could remember it so clearly, so perfectly, like it was yesterday. It was night time. We were gripping our guns, our knuckles white. Hannigan was just up ahead, scanning the area with his binoculars. He opened his mouth to say something. Suddenly a raptor leapt up from the undergrowth, and took down Hannigan in one fell swoop. Dearing and me just stared, shocked._

_I came to my senses and in a flash I raised my gun, switching to the full auto setting and firing. The raptor went down, but there were more. Me and Dearing stepped backwards, firing in wide arcs, until we were back to back. Dearing's gun clicked dry, and before I could help him one of them grabbed him in its jaws. I span round, firing past his shoulder, blowing its head right off. Dearing crumpled._

_Lizards to the right of us, lizards to the left of us, danger all around. Dearing was lying on the ground literally venting his spleen, still trying to fire his M60. We both knew we were going to die. Dearing ran out of ammo. A few seconds later, so did I. As if on cue, three raptors rose from the undergrowth and prepared to strike._

_In that instant I realised how futile it all was, how I had wasted my life. The memory of that feeling was very clear. I closed my eyes. _

_But then there was a roaring overhead and halos of light surrounded us. A spotlight glared. The forest flattened down around us. It was Blake and the others in a helicopter. I looked up, seeing Blake grin as he sprayed at the raptors. The chopper landed, the wind almost bowling us over. A dozen hands grabbed us and pulled us on board. We dusted off to the sound of the music. _

_It seemed like only yesterday._

* * *

Hannigan came back the next day. With him he brought two FNGs. Fucking New Guys. They were just indistinct faces in our crowd at that point. One was called Ramirez and one was called Dexter, and I could never quite remember which one was which. Han also brought back the usual orders from high command, supplies and, most importantly to me, newspapers and magazines.

I pounced on them hungrily as Hannigan arrived in the base with the two newbies in tow. I was supposed to go and say hi to them but instead I made my excuses and climbed the high hide. Dearing came up as well, and watched the horizon wistfully, reading the papers that I was finished with.

"Oh god," said Dearing quietly. I looked up.

He ripped the newspaper in half and tossed it from the platform. It span in the wind, then drifted down through the treetops and out of sight.

"Why the hell did you do that?" I asked.

"Fucked up," he said. "It's all so fucked up." I couldn't get any more out of him.

* * *

_(ORIGINAL A/N) Man, it's been a really long time since I updated this. I've been waiting on my beta reader. Who is supremely lazy. -- _

_Thus, this hasn't been checked by someone other than me...s_

_Swearing because in reality, in this situation, these men probably would._

_I'm actually going to update regularly now. :D_


	12. Surrender

**XI: Surrender**

**Day 138**

**0705 hours**

Sometimes I wonder just what Dearing saw that was so horrible in those newspapers that was more horrible that what was going on here. He didn't want to know what was going on in the rest of the world. I read those magazines and newspapers cover to cover three times over. One of them was a knitting magazine – perhaps that shows you just how desperate I was to get out of this war.

At times I considered shooting myself in the foot. Then maybe they'd take me out of here, back to a hospital somewhere with pretty nurses and sunlight filtering through the net curtains. But I knew that it wouldn't happen. I didn't have the strength of will.

On all sides of me the jungle closed itself around me and blocked out the light. It seemed to me then that it was a living thing, malicious and malevolent. It wanted to trap me in there forever. I fought back – I hacked at its grasping fingers with my machete. But it began to swallow me whole.

I spent more and more time in the high hide. There, with the rain drumming on the roof and the wind whistling through the metal slats and making the whole structure sway, high above the jungle, I could feel that I was out of it. I could feel free there. That was where I would sit, reading my magazines. Listening to the bombs.

It was strange how quickly my outlook went from bad to innumerably worse. I have since seen a psychologist and he says that all this was probably caused by what happened next. All I know is I could feel the wilderness edging closer every time I looked around, suffocating me. And ever since then I have had mild claustrophobia and post-traumatic stress syndrome, among other things.

Anyway. It happened around Day 125. It was the first day in months without rain. This got my hopes up. Even if it was just for one day, I could enjoy the sunlight. This was the tropics, for god's sake. Rain wasn't what I had signed up for.

I got stuck with Smith on a recon patrol. This was due to Smith having a huge row with Hannigan over some missing guns. Personally I think someone just lost their gun out in the wilderness and stole a replacement one. In any case, Smith's punishment was to be placed with me, which was bloody unfair considering it was punishing me more than him.

There had been reports of heavy activity all around this sector, and Hannigan was worried that they were massing for an incursion into our territory. There had been reports, fleeting sightings, but nothing more. Our mission was to investigate the area and mount an ambush if we found a supply trail.

We didn't speak. I suspected Smith slightly anyway – he had always been jealous of Blake's stature and high rank. He had definitely perked up since the attack.

There was a long trek through the forest, but nothing much happened until we were almost back at base. There we were, proceeding in sullen silence, nearly home, when Smith suddenly raised his hand for us to stop.

There was a tripwire stretched out between two trees ahead of us. It wasn't one of the ones we had set up ourselves, to keep animals out. It was much too far away from the camp. Someone else had put it here.

Slowly, Smith unstrapped his radio from his belt and twiddled the dial. "This is Charlie two to Bravo Base. Charlie two to Bravo Base. Have found tripmine in an undesignated location, possibly set by interlopers. Definitely not ours. Please advise, over."

There was a muffled, tinny voice on the other end, and then a squeak. Smith hurriedly turned the volume down.

"Sit tight, Charlie two, we are sending someone out," came the reply.

"Do you think it's the killer?" I said.

"Shut up, Long. Be quiet."

He began to creep forward towards the tripwire, placing each foot carefully and moving at a snail's pace. I moved around to cover the flank, brushing aside some ferns.

Smith began to say something. I heard the intake of breath, and then a gunshot. I turned just in time to see him crumple with a smoking hole in his back

"Fuck!" I yelled. I looked around rapidly, and seeing nothing I started firing away into the jungle with my shotgun. Trying to hit something, anything. Ferns were shredded, chunks of bark and sprays of hot sap erupted from tree trunks. The air filled with the smell of cordite and slivers of foliage.

"Eat it, gooks!" I screamed.

And then I heard shouting from somewhere nearby, and right on cue, Clark, Denver and one of the new guys (could have been Ramirez, could have been Dexter. He had glasses, I know that) came bursting through a curtain of vines.

There I was, with a smoking shotgun and spent shells all over the ground, standing breathless. And there was Smith, lying on the ground bleeding from a bullet wound in his back.

"Oh my god!" said glasses. "Oh my god!"

Denver pointed his gun at me and screamed in my face. "Get down on the ground!"

"What? Denver! They just killed Smith! We've got to get after them!" I said. He struck a blow across my forehead with the butt of his gun. I felt myself fall backwards and hit the ground, but it was far-off and I didn't really care. Somewhere above me a muffled voice kept squeaking "My god! Oh my god!"

"Shut up, Dexter," said another. Ah, I thought. Dexter, that's his name. Dexter – glasses. Got to remember that.

"I can't believe it," said someone who sounded vaguely like Clark. "I just can't believe he would do it."

"Believe it, Clark. We've caught him red-handed," said the first, voice, apparently Denver.

I tried to sit up and protest my innocence through the haze of red, but there was something on my chest. It was a boot.

"It wasn't me," I tried to say, but it came out as "Wasnargh…meh."

Someone grabbed me behind the shoulders and hauled me to my feet.

"We've got you, you fucker!" shouted the big red face in front of me.

"Denver…" I murmured. "You've got to catch him…" This got me another smack across the face. I was dragged, half unconscious, across the rough forest floor, until the world was no longer a dark haze, but a bright one, and I heard shouting voices. Then my cheek smacked something hard.

I knew from the noise we were back at camp. I risked opening my eyes, and saw people buzzing around me. It reminded me of when I first brought Blake in, only this time I was the one lying on the table with blood on my face and people leaning over me. I felt like I was on a slab, the sun like a halogen lamp burning down on my back.

I was going to be fragged by my own side. I couldn't believe it. At east let the dinks kill me, I thought.

"Shit!" I heard Coles exclaim. "Long's been attacked!

"No, man! Long's the killer! It's Long!"

It's fucking not, I thought.

"We should kill him right now!"

Oh, for God's sake.

"Kill him!"

There was shout and a click, and then I heard Coles say "pull that trigger and you die. I _will_ kill you." I felt gratified at this. At least someone cared.

"You and what army?"

"Nobody move."

I twisted my head around, ignoring the pain in my forehead, to see Dearing holding a grenade high above his head. His other hand was grasping the pin, ready to wrench it right out. "Nobody move," he repeated. His face was furious. He looked like he really might pop the pin.

Everybody backed slightly away from him. Suddenly, Clark leapt forward into the middle and stood next to me. "Wait!" he shouted.

I raised my head. "Hi everyone," I said. It seemed like a funny thing to say at the time, but it probably wasn't by the way the faces turned to me and glared.

"Wait! Long's weapon is a shotgun! Smith's wounds are from an M-16!" shouted Clark breathlessly.

"S'right," I said indistinctly.

"That don't mean nothing! He coulda hid it!"

"No, wait! There wasn't anything! Long didn't kill Smith! It's the wrong gun!"

At this point, I sat up and shook my head clear of fog. I had found the last few minutes amusing, but now the gravity of the situation bulldozed into me like a fully-loaded freight train.

Dearing lowered the grenade slowly. But the ring of guns around me remained poised to let loose a storm of lead. Hannigan stepped forward and stood between me and the shaking barrels. He motioned to Denver.

"Take some men, go to where you found Smith, and search for any discarded weapons. The rest of you, lock this one up but don't kill him."

In the absence of somewhere to actually lock me up, they tied my hands and then strapped me to a pole in the middle of the camp. Hannigan sat in a deck chair, facing me. It seemed surreal to me, that he was interrogating me from a red-and-white striped deck chair.

"I don't think you did it," he said. "Don't have the balls."

I laughed. "That's pretty lame, Han. You think I'll confess just to prove you wrong? Prove I have got the balls?. "

"It was worth a try. I know you hate Smith, maybe I even believe you kill him."

"Han, if it had been my shotgun that killed him, then he wouldn't just have one hole in his back."

Hannigan grinned, a sabretooth grin. "Hah? You could use a communal M16. Some of them were stolen, eh?"

"Wasn't me."

"We'll see," grinned Han. He pulled out an old-fashioned revolver, and placed it on the ground in front of me. He stepped round behind me, and untied one of my wrists. Then he raised his own gun at the back of my neck.

"You know how to play this game."

I looked up at him. "You wouldn't-"

"You play roulette, bitch. We see how you like to gamble."

I looked at the revolver, then back at him. "Han, no! No!"

The barrel of Han's gun pressed against my head. "Play."

My arm was jittering as I picked up the revolver. I thought about shooting him, but I had no chance. His men were all over the camp, and I wouldn't make it out alive. I raised the shaking gun and pressed it against my temple.

"Play."

I screwed up my eyes. I pulled the trigger.

Click.

My breath came out all in one gasp. Tears streaked my face. "Jesus!" I babbled.

"Play!" yelled Han in my ear.

Pull. Click.

Pull. Click.

Pull. Click.

Pull. Click.

Suddenly I burst out screaming, a formless litany of terror rolling from my mouth. Five shots. This was the sixth, and there could only be one outcome of squeezing this trigger. I screamed at him, more in anger than anything else.

"You're gonna pull that trigger, Long! You think you come to my island, kill my people? You gamble with your life, you fucker! Now play!"

I was choking. Slowly, I pulled the trigger, and then stopped half way. I couldn't do it.

Han kicked me in the small of the back. My finger jerked. Pull.

I imagined the bullet entering my head in slow motion, pushing through the skin, making a neat hole in the braincase, burrowing through the soft brains beneath and then shattering the bone on the other side. I pictured myself falling over forwards, my head a red mess, crumpling to the ground.

Click.

"Funny, huh?" said Han. "Good joke, huh?" He spat in my face. "You're no killer! The killer is outside! He's outside! He's not one of us!"

I cried.

Eventually Denver returned, reporting that they had not found the murder weapon, all the while staring suspiciously at me. I was released, and allowed to go free, innocent until proven guilty. Only my guilt had already been proven. The only ones who would talk to me were Coles and Dearing, the latter of whom wasn't very much interested in conversation nowadays.

Loneliness.

They. The voices.

_They hit you pretty hard, long. But you've got to hold on, man, get a grip, got to stay awake._

_Got to stay awake, Long. Can you hear me?_

_Can you hear me, Long? We're with you. It's going to be okay._

And the light.

_Can you hear me?_

Camp became unbearable. The jungle pressed in on all sides, an enemy. It was strange and inscrutable and dark and hostile. But the other men were just as hostile, and instead of finding solace back at camp I found only hate. And still, branches stretched themselves over my head and tree trunks crowded in. You know when you've been lying in the sun with your eyes closed for hours upon hours, so that all you can see is warm light, and then you get up and open your eyes, used to the sunlight, and suddenly the entire world seems dull and coloured blue? That was how I saw all the time now.

Had I died and gone to hell? You understand that it was still rainy season, or rather storm season. This meant there was no way I could possibly escape using the tiny rubber dinghies we had brought. I'd be drowned before I even got to the ship. Admittedly in the state I was then, I would probably have taken my chances and tried it sooner or later.

I would sit on the edge of that pit, looking down at the captive raptor.

"I feel like you're my only friend," I said to it. It just looked at me curiously. "Maybe you don't understand me but at least you don't hate me. I mean, you hate me, but that's because you're a lizard. You're supposed to hate me. Not like these bastards.

I looked around. It was raining again, and I hunched my shoulders.

"Between you and me, I think everyone here except me is completely fucking insane," I said to the raptor. "Don't look at me like that. You haven't seen them."

Despite all the odds, the wind and the rain, I was smoking. I had been smoking a lot more recently, numbing myself. Whenever I look back I see me sitting there in the rain by the raptor pit, numbing myself with drugs and one of the communal walkmans (walkmen?). REM, Dire Straights, Bob Marley, David Bowie, Nirvana. Brothers In Arms. Nightswimming.

"Completely insane, every one of them. None of them trust each other. Everybody's on edge. Bet it's never like that with raptors, eh? I bet you all work as a team. I'm sure you're enjoying yourself, you bastard."

The raptor never seemed to understand me. It just looked at me, and squawked and growled, and narrowed its eyes when I looked at it.

"Hey, how about this. There are two fish in a tank, right? One says to the other, 'how do you drive this thing?'" I said, grinning down at the raptor. It turned away and began pawing at the ground.

I shrugged. "Fucking lizards. Don't appreciate a good joke."

Sometimes I screamed. Just screamed at the sheer pressure of it all, squashing me into the ground, at the desolation. I ran out into the jungle and screamed my lungs out, hacking at the trees with a machete. I screamed until I couldn't scream and just clawed at the bark making little rasping noises. I'm a social animal. After one week without human contact I would get depressed. Two and I wouldn't sleep at night. It had now been a month without any meaningful contact with other human beings and I felt like I was going to explode. There were people to talk to. They just acted like I wasn't there. I didn't sleep. With the sky darkened by rainclouds, days blurred into nights. The shit piled up.

"At least," I said to the raptor one day. "You're not talking back."

It seemed to grin.

And then, one morning, as I stood in the high hide with my eyes closed so I didn't have to look at the world in shades of blue and grey, with water droplets splattering on my shoulders, I heard something. At first I mistook it for thunder – there had been several flashes of lightning in the last few hours. A thudding, thumping hum, undulating up and down the octaves, now louder, now quiet. It was very far off. The sound triggered a thought in my head. Fire, bright orange fire, and a jungle landscape streaming below me. But there was something different about this helicopter sound, something altogether more real. Fire scorching the landscape, torching the jungle. Deafening thudding. Gunshots and napalm and the sound of-

"-Choppers overhead," I said. "Oh shit!"

And then it was on top of me. A large blue-and-grey transport helicopter, its twin rotor blades cutting up the sky, cutting the very raindrops in half, throwing up an enormous dust cloud. It was flying low, so low I could see the seams where the landing gear hatches were. It filled the world above me.

I shouted up at it, but in seconds it was thundering over the forest to the north, and retreating into the distance. I yelled at it, "Stop! Stop!" but it didn't. It wheeled around and sank below the treetops. Immediately I scrambled down the framework of the high hide, thinking somehow that if I got to it I could escape, I could get out. Even as I hit the ground running I realised this was impossible. A signal! That was it!

A real helicopter. This was reality.

I raced for the hardware hut, to grab one of those anti-tank missile launchers and send a streak of fire high above like a signal flare. But I was only halfway to the shed when I heard those rotor blades again, and it flew over, and then faded.

I staggered forward a little, then sank to my knees in the rain.

"No," I said. "No…"

But then I realised. The helicopter had landed, which meant it had dropped someone off. And that meant that not only would it be back, but there were people – other people – on the island, people from outside. That chopper that day was a sign. A sign from God, or from heaven, or just from the rest of the world, any of which I was prepared to believe in and worship at that point.

And far, far away, the rotor blades faded into the distance.

* * *

_ORIGINAL A/N: Thanks for your reviews, Evil and Ryan! And what makes you think everyone's going to die, Mr. Evans:_

_Again, from this point onwards I'm flying blind so to speak, with no beta reader having told me what sucks and what doesn't. Any volunteers, by any chance? _

_I love Vietnam movie references - and so does Long. Till next time... :D_


	13. Just Following Orders

**XII: Following Orders**

**Day 143**

**0501 hours**

The helicopter caused a huge disturbance in the camp. Everyone fell out of their camp beds and rushed from their tents before the echoes had even faded. Hannigan was first out. He raced straight to the hardware shed, darted in, and came out with one of the rocket launchers. He aimed it into the sky, squinted, then lowered it once more.

"It's them!" he shouted. "The murderers! They've come to kill us all!"

I scrambled to my feet, to try and stop him before he blew the chopper out of the sky, but it was already gone. Anyway, he looked like he was too hungover to have hit anything even if he did shoot. I sat down on the sandbag wall.

Hannigan looked around, dropped the rocket launcher and seemed to think for a moment, then turned to me.

"Don't you see, Long? The guy who's been killing us off was just a scout! This is the real thing!"

I tried to keep my voice level. "Han, they're probably researchers. They just arrived. With all due respect I think that one of us-"

He wasn't listening. As the rest of the soldiers unfolded from their tents he raised his arms for silence.

"All of you secure the perimeter! An unknown enemy has just landed on our island! I want you all ready in thirty minutes! We're moving out!"

Oh my God, I thought. He was going to march out there and kill them all. The busy hustle and bustle faded into a slow motion blur around me. Enemies, he called them? He was going to shoot every last one of them. Coles jerked me out of it when he bumped into me. Before he could say anything I had pulled him into a tent.

"Coles!" I said in a low voice. "This is it, man! We can get out of here!"

He stared at me like I was crazy. "What are you talking about, Long?"

I faltered. "You know…the chopper! We can talk to these people, we can get out!"

Coles looked at me, very oddly. "What's the point of leaving, man? These people are a threat to us. We've got to take them out."

I shouted, then quietened. "Coles, how can you talk like that?" He just shook his head. He stormed out the back of the tent, leaving me alone, stooped beneath the low canvas ceiling. I panicked, and rushed out, bumping into Clark.

I could barely contain myself. I hissed at him in a sort of horse half-whisper. "Clark! How can you just stand there? They're going to go out there and kill them all!"

Clark stared at me just like Coles had, only with more hostility. "Of course we are, Long. We just can't have other people snooping around here. We've got to hit them before they dig in," he said flatly. "Now fuck off."

I gaped at him, trying to say something, but nothing came out. He pushed past me. I ran straight for Marlow, and he had exactly the same reaction. Are you crazy? Of course, we've got to go in there and massacre the lot of them. Denver forced me to go and tool up at the hardware shed, and I couldn't go anywhere while Hannigan gave a typically curt briefing, while the two newbies got all excited at the promise of some combat. When we walked through the jungle, marching beneath the heavy leaves, I tried to slip away but Denver or Clark would push me back into line, telling me harshly to keep up.

There was a heavy and awkward silence beyond the pattering of rain. As we crept forwards sticking to the shadow of the tall trees more to shelter from the downpour than to remain concealed, I realised this was what I had been waiting for, all the time. But now it was here, I was scared shitless.

"This isn't my fucking war," I muttered.

Soon I could see bright light through the trees ahead. Hannigan motioned for us to stop and then he and Coles went and scouted ahead. The rest of us flattened against trees or crouched down low among the ferns, and waited for them to get back. I looked around. There was no way I could just sneak off. And I had already tried to convince Denver to listen to me, but I got the same reaction from him as from anyone else.

Hannigan appeared suddenly from the darkness. I never knew how he did that, just popping up next to you. He spoke in a low drawl.

"Alright, people. There's a camp just up ahead. Lot of people. One or two are armed. I'm gonna take some men round the right and attack 'em from the flanks. Denver, when I give the signal you run like hell towards that clearing and clear it out. Until that signal I want you to hold position. Clear?"

It was. Moments later he disappeared, taking half of the group with him. Only me, Coles, Marlow, and Ramirez were left, waiting for the radio to squawk into life. The rain was getting I grabbed Ramirez's arm.

I whispered to him, "Man, come on. This is crazy. We can talk to these people. We can't let Hannigan dice everyone."

He snorted. "What, are you a coward? Come on, man, it'll be cool."

Suddenly I had a vision of a young man, black British, just lost his crappy menial job at a local printworks, desperate for some action and adventure and obsessed with war movies, champing at the bit to get into some real fighting, meeting Hannigan and journeying out into the jungle, clutching his M16, thinking, 'wow. This is so cool.'

You fucking idiot, I thought. You have no idea.

"Alpha one to Bravo one. Do you copy, over?"

Denver fumbled with his radio, then snapped it to his ear. "Uh, we copy Alpha one. Uh, over."

Hannigan's voice came through the speakers, tinny and distant. "Saddle up, bravo one," it said. "Commence attack."

* * *

When I look back I realise how terrifying it must have been for the researchers. For that was what they were – just scientists, wearing wide-brimmed hats and baseball caps, geeky logos on white T-shirts and hunting vests with twenty-odd pockets. They weren't dangerous. They had no idea what was about to hit them.

We came screaming through the sodden jungle and broke cover twenty metres from the first startled researcher, with our uniforms and our camouflage face-paint and our long black guns, heavy boots splashing in the muddy puddles. We spread out with our rifles raised and pointing directly at our foes. Everyone except me was screaming commands at the top of their lungs, screaming get down, get down on the fucking floor.

Over on our right Hannigan's group exploded out of the mists and raced towards the researcher's camp brandishing their weapons. We closed quickly on the target, running in that weird crabwise special forces run, jogging forwards while keeping our guns trained on potential threats. One of the more quick-thinking researchers snatched up what looked like a tranquilliser rifle from one of the crates. I don't think he intended to shoot us but instantly there was a chorus of cracks and barks and little puffs of blood flared on his torso. Gunshots ripped through him from both sides and he toppled over forwards.

Hannigan's group got to the camp first. By this time the researchers were fleeing but both groups stopped momentarily and fired at the running shapes, laying down a devastating crossfire. We pressed forwards while Hannigan's lot covered. A man with a beard and a hunting jacket raised his hands in surrender. Marlow knocked him down with a blow from the butt of his gun. The man fell, bleeding. We skirted between two rows of tents. Everyone except me was firing from the hip as they went, mowing down the shapes that ran across our path. I stopped in my tracks as a woman tried to dive into a tent and Denver grabbed her by the neck, threw her to the ground and subdued her.

We rounded the survivors up into the centre of the camp, herding them with our guns. One made a run for it. He didn't get five metres. Denver found another two had locked themselves inside a sort of high-tech campervan. Marlow primed a grenade.

"Fire in the hole!" shouted someone.

I hit the ground. Moments later the campervan blew apart in cloud of debris, brown smoke tendrils thrusting out into the cool air. What was left was a smoking heap of twisted metal.

Within minutes the situation was under the control. The surviving researchers were crying, screaming out. We huddled them up. We made them squat down. There were two women: one was attractive with red hair, in her twenties. Another was slightly older, maybe mid-thirties, with a mop of straw-blonde hair. There was also a teenage girl, possible the red-head's daughter, cowering under her baseball cap. All three were plucked from the crowd by Hannigan and Denver.

I realised what they were about to do.

I didn't watch as the others took it in turn to rape them. Even the child. I closed my eyes to it, though I couldn't close my ears to the screams and the grunts. I didn't help them. I couldn't. They were shouting at me, their pleas only just escaping from tortured lips. The male researchers looked at me pleadingly. I thought of helping them, urging them to run away, but everybody was watching. Both them and me would have been shot down in moments. That's what I tell myself: there was nothing I could do for them without getting shot myself.

Apart from me, both Dearing, who seemed utterly disgusted, and Medina, refused to participate. But neither seemed to have any qualms about killing. The rest were standing in a circle around one soldier – I couldn't see his face – thrashing violently with the red-haired woman beneath him. The blonde was up against a wall, screaming as Clark forced himself upon her. I'm not going to tell you what they did to the child. And I'm not going to write any more about what they did to the three girls. It wasn't nice. You don't want to know.

At one point I couldn't take it any more. I spun round and shouted out to Hannigan: "Han! Stop this! These people haven't done anything!"

He shouted back kind of laconically. "Shut it, you cocksucker!"

I pointed my gun at him. "Jesus, Han! Stop it or I'll fucking-"

"Oh! You'll what? Shoot me? Then we'll both die!"

I caught sight of the teenage girl's dirty face, pleading. I wanted to do something, but at that moment, there was a shot, and the girl's head exploded. Dearing had fired.

"You-" he started to shout. He didn't get any further, because Hannigan kicked him in the groin then picked him up and threw him onto a tent, collapsing it. Then the rest of them started to beat Dearing, smashing his head against poles and stamping on his fingers. They drove the butts of their guns into his stomach, and they kept on and on until he stopped shouting and just lay there moaning.

I don't know how long it was before the screams gradually faded into gasps, and then into silence. The other soldiers kept jeering, cheering, encouraging. But eventually they stopped, and then I heard five gunshots, in quick succession, and then a scream. They were done.

Then we shot the men. And I mean 'we'. Hannigan screamed in my ear, shouting at me to shoot or he'd kill me as the rest poured entire clips into the writhing mass of bodies. I fired my shotgun at the nearest researcher at point blank range. His torso pretty much evaporated. Well, we kept on firing.

I won't pretend that any of what happened wasn't my fault.

When it was over, and there were only bodies smoking in a heap, the rest of the soldiers turned away. But I stayed there, looking over the mess at Dearing's broken form moaning slowly on the ground. Something gripped my foot. I looked down to see one of the researchers, barely alive, grasping at my leg with his mutilated hand. I bent down over him and put his hand in mine. He smiled, and then closed his eyes. When I prised his fingers from my fist, clenched in anger, there was a slip of paper crumpled up in the palm of my hand.

It said, in messy handwriting, 'chopper 2300 Friday 27. Hill South.'

The researchers had brought two jeeps with them – chunky futuristic looking ATVs stuffed with survey equipment – and we packed everything we could carry that we looted from the camp into them. Dearing looked dead, lying in an awkward heap with his trousers down – what should have been an oddly comical sight. I decided the others would probably kill me if I tried to get his body on the jeep. We left him lying in the middle of the camp.

The last I saw of that place was the raptors, suddenly appearing from all sides to swarm over the pile of dead bodies. As I sat on the back stoop of the ATV and watched through the tangle of branches it seemed to me that the raptors were the jungle, perhaps its guardians or the blood stirring in its veins, and the jungle was taking back what belonged to it. Had we become part of the jungle? Or were we the thorn in its side, the one cancerous cell?

Some of them started to drag Dearing away. He woke suddenly, and I realised he had simply been unconscious, and he screamed. Someone next to me laughed as he was pulled by the raptors, unable to act, into the darkness, leaving just two long furrows in the earth where his fingers had scraped his defiance. He screamed again, but I couldn't see him anymore. I think they were taking him back to their nest, to feed to their young.

Hannigan was humming. A tuneless, annoying, monotone hum. He seemed happy as we bounced away through the forest.

Everything had changed. Even if Dearing had been going mad, he was my best friend. I was filled with one thought and one thought alone: Hannigan had to be taken out. He had gone quite obviously insane. I would have to kill him, and then I was going to be there when that helicopter landed to pick up the expedition. I'd leave the rest of them to the raptors. I saw what we had become. Who was I kidding? We were the jungle, and the jungle was in us.

* * *


	14. The Wrong Reality

_

* * *

_

**XIII: The Wrong Reality**

**Day 146**

**0016 hours**

So that night was a bad night. I tossed and turned, couldn't get to sleep, thought maybe I had a fever. Now we had to contend with high winds as well as icy hard rain. Above the island, the sky writhed and swirled in the brooding gloom. Black and grey clouds collided like freight trains and formed huge, menacing towers of darkness. And all the time, constant, unending rain. As it drummed on the roof of the tent, and storms closed in around our little circle of firelight, I writhed in my sleeping bag, alone.

The roof was shaking. I couldn't see anything, but I felt plaster or something touch my left arm. There was a blur above me. A face. It moved.

"Can he hear us, do you think?"

"

I tried to move. The face leaned closer. It looked liked Dearing. It wasn't him, but it looked like him. There was some guy with a hat behind him.

"Long? I don't know if you can hear me."

Flash of fire, subliminal epilepsy montage of horror, and some kind of explosion-

"You've got to come out of it, Long."

I had been here a long time. Once, I dimly remembered, there was a time when I wasn't here, when I wasn't on this island - but no details. I sat, with my knees touching my chin, rocking back and forwards in the canvas tent. I didn't want to be in the tent. It was dark and it smothered me, but I couldn't see any possible way to escape. There were footsteps outside, tramping backwards and forwards, and sometimes talking. Furtive whispered conversations; a few shouts.

"You're hallucinating, Long."

I buried my head in my knees.

"Trust me, I'm a psychologist. You were hit pretty bad. Grenade. It's a bit touch and go right now."

Chopper. 2300 Friday 27. Hill South.

That was when the helicopter was coming, to pick me up. I could escape. Somehow, I don't know how but somehow.

Medina had approached me, after the massacre. He too had been horrified, abd we took a walk in the jungle , and shared a joint, and talked.

"Long," he said. "Hannigan is mad."

"No shit Sherlock," I said. I had to pause for a moment before the noise of some aircraft overhead faded. Medina looked at me oddly.

"Sometimes you seem like the only other sane person here," he said.

"Yes." For a minute there, I entertained the thought of telling him about my escape route. That could wait, I decided. Maybe I'd tell him nearer the time - right now, there was far too much at stake.

"You know why he's here?" Medina asked.

I sighed. "Nobody knows why they're here, Medina. One of the great mysteries of life."

But Medina grabbed me, stared me in the eyes, clearly expasperated. "Dinosaur embryos, Long. I'm telling you, here's here for dinosaur embryos. You know he keeps going to the research centre? You seen him poring over those printouts from the lab? I wouldn't be surprised if he was the killer, man. Dearing, Smith, Blake, they all got too smart for him, you know?"

I didn't answer. He didn't know, I suppose, that tomorrow Han would be dead.

* * *

There was rumbling and flashing and several loud bangs. Quickfire montage again; someone shouting in my face, dark figures scrambling, a blaze of napalm, the thump of a mortar, a cry, a little wooden stick with a strange green knob on the end that I realised was a grenade- 

"Can you hear me? Long - buddy - stay with us. Please, stay with us."

I was in a bed. It was dark, but there were flashes of light. Someone was crouching under a broken window, and I saw it was someone who looked a little like Coles, but wasn't Coles, and the rhythmic fireflash was illuminating his features in stark orange, like long slow lightning.

"You've got to wake up, Long," said someone. "You've got to come out of it. You're in the embassy. They're hitting us bad, Long. You've got to stay with us. You've got to wake up."

It's just my mind, I told myself. I've been out here too long and my mind is messing with me, trying to convince itself that what's happening isn't happening.

"Wake up."

They would never leave me alone. All the noises outside, the helicopters, the tramping feet, the shouts and the screams and the dinosaurs singing to each other, badly out of key. They wouldn't stop. They wouldn't rest. They wouldn't shut up.I kept thinking about Dearing. Was this what it had been like for him, near the end? I suddenly realised with abject horror that he had seen me as just another dumbshit grunt, another person being gripped by the madness of this place. Another person who didn't understand.

The tent seemed very small.

"Long...Long...it's going to be okay, everything's going to be all right..."

I found myself able to move, able to twitch my fingers.

"It worked!" Said someone. "The drugs worked!"

"Long, can you hear me?"

I nodded.

"You're hallucinating. You were blown up by a grenade. Your mind is making things up to try and keep itself going, but this is real." He took my hand. "This is what's real."

I shook my head.

"This isn't a dream, Long. This isn't a trip. There's a trigger. You've got to find a trigger, wake yourself up. You've-"

Another thunderous boom, and the building shook. I noticed they were all staying away from the windows. Something big went over above the roof. An orange searchlight drifted across the walls.

"You've got to escape, Long. Get out. Wake up."

I wasn't going to be fooled. I wanted to wake up, wanted to wake up from this nightmare, wanted to get out of the dream my mind was making for me. I had to wake up.

"Bullshit," I heard myself say, weakly.

"We're losing him!"

"Come back - Long - ! Sam! Samuel!"

I felt the room fading. Fuckers, I thought.

* * *

And morning, cool and clear, as I opened my eyes to the cold light filtering through green canvas. Crawled outside, shedding layers of urine and sweat-soaked sheets and blankets, leaving the sleeping cocoon on the floor. I managed to draw myself up into a crouch. Tucked my knees under my chin and sat there outside the tent, shivering. It took five minutes for me to get a grip on my lighter, another five to bring the quivering cigarette to my lips. After that, I managed to stop shaking so much. 

It was damn cold. A strong wind was battering the tops of our canvas heaps, whistling through the camp. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt like my head was clear. There was a way out of all this other than death. I could live through this with my body and perhaps even my misfiring brain intact.

Hannigan was the cause of everything, and his death would be my spark.

The plan:

1. Kill Hannigan.

2. ?

3. Escape island.

4. Happy ending.

Put like that, it all seemed so easy.

* * *

_ORIGINAL A/N: Damn, it's been a long time. I've been on holiday, and checking overthe rest of the story. But now everything's sorted out. No there's no uncertainty. Updates will be regular. The end is nigh!_

_Meanwhile, in the real world, thank you so much for all your reviews! I'm glad you liked that scene; that's exactly much the reaction I was hoping for. Also a big thank you to Tinyxipe for helping me get these next two chapters sorted out. :D_

_Since this is such a short chapter, there'll be a new one in just a few days. Happy hunting. :_


	15. Fragged

**XIV: Fragged**

**Day 147 **

**0016 hours**

Which brought me, after another day of tense waiting, to this. Watching from the shadows as I waited for Hannigan to go out on his nightly hunt.

By looking at a newspaper and stealing Coles' watch (mine had broken long ago) I had worked out that the helicopter was due on Day 149 by our count. Since then I had been preparing. Hannigan, in a fit of new-found confidence after the massacre, had proposed we hunt the resident Tyrannosaurus. He believed there would be no more killings. They day had passed slowly as I waited for nightfall and my chance to make a move, kill him.

And now, regular as clockwork, he geared up and slouched off into the jungle. I followed him at a safe distance, making sure I could always see him. It was a suspenseful trip, and bloody horrible. I could hardly see him through the rain and in the darkness. He kept stopping to sniff the wind, check behind trees. Paranoid? You wouldn't believe. I was just waiting for an opportunity to kill him. It wasn't good enough to just shoot him. He had to know who was about to end his life.

He headed for the labs. I wondered if Medina's claim had any truth to it. A few hours had passed, and we were moving through an area where concrete structures littered the jungle, lying in broken heaps like ancient Aztec ruins, when Hannigan suddenly stopped, and threw himself to the ground, disappearing under the bushes. I ducked and held my breath. For quite a while, there was only the thundering of the storm. I squinted through the flurry. Then there was a strangled cry.

Ahead of me, in the hollowed-out centre of a concrete building, where plants had re-grown all over what had once been a floor, Hannigan stood up. His arm was tightened around Medina's neck. Medina was gripping a knife, his knuckles white. Hannigan twisted his arm, and smacked the blade to the ground.

Medina shouted something. Hannigan snarled. I couldn't make out what they were saying. The rain was too loud, a gushing compound roar.

"-bastard!" screamed Medina, struggling against Hannigan's grip. I caught a snatch of the reply.

" – killer all along, huh?" Hannigan growled." - too many men, you'll get your –" A thunderclap drowned out his words. " - on me, cocksucker?"

I couldn't hear any more of what was said. Slowly, I inched closer, but the noise from the thrashing branches above drowned out all the sounds of the conversation, even though both men were obviously screaming at the top of their lungs.

" – bullshit! You've been – us off, one by one, waiting – "

" – lie to yourself, Hannigan! You enjoy your dirty money because you'll - ! you and - rot - "

Hannigan screamed, and threw Medina to the ground. Medina started to shout but his cry was cut off by an abrupt shot. The crack of the gunshot, exploding out above the storm, hurt my ears, and the scene was outlined in white light for a nanosecond. Then Hannigan yelled into the empty air, started firing at the trees and screaming. I caught a glimpse of his face in the sharp strobe of a muzzle flash. He was crying. I edged backwards, and disappeared into the darkness.

I tried to get away as quickly as I could, my mind buzzing. As Hannigan's cries got quieter I started to think I heard strange sounds all around me. I wasn't imagining it – a low and regular hooting. I started to run.

Far behind me I heard Hannigan's first gunshots ring out. The hooting intensified and there were more gunshots, but no screams. I sprinted, brushing through vegetation, wanting to get away from that weird, delirious yowling.

Suddenly it was all around me, a chorus of owl-sounds and short barking whoops. Something which I could have sworn was just part of the jungle suddenly shifted and began to move towards me. Lightning flashed, and before me was a monster I had never seen before.

It looked like a raptor. But it was bigger, and its skull was deeper. The most notable difference, however, was the twin ridges of bone that crested its scalp. It looked like it was wearing a very strange hat. The thing hissed at me, and opened its mouth, showing sharp teeth. I slowly raised my shotgun, and aimed very carefully at its face as it crept towards me.

At the sight of the gun it hissed louder and a brightly coloured frill of skin ballooned outwards from the base of its neck, making it look like one of those dogs with lampshades around their throats. The frill was ringed with vibrating barbs, and its shook and shivered. I was distracted for a moment. When the dinosaur's head snapped back with a choking sound, and a flying blob of black gunk whipped past my head, it took me by complete surprise.

Some of the stuff landed on my shoulder and immediately I felt a burning sensation. I gasped through gritted teeth, realising the thing had spat at me.

It prepared to spit again.

I blasted it in the face, and I ran, the hoots and howls ringing out somewhere behind me.

* * *

My guess is this. Medina suspected Hannigan was being employed by some genetics company to steal dinosaur embryos, eggs, genetic material, anything he could relating to the creation of the animals. I don't know if he was realy on a corporate payroll. But Hannigan was obsessed with the idea that this place was the heart of the wilderness and that by taking back the labs, he could claim his dominion over nature. In any case, Medina kept following him, which explained his constant walks in the jungle. This time, Medina got caught. Hannigan believed that Medina was the killer, and executed him. The rest? Don't ask me. I only work here.

Hannigan came back as if nothing had happened. For the first time in what seemed like years, I got out my tattered little dinosaur book, searched for the dinosaur I had seen last night. It was a Dilophosaurus, and no-one had ever predicted that it could spit venom (which I had cleaned off as soon as I got back, and seemed to have done no lasting harm). I ticked it off; I now had enough points to send off for a badge. Woop-de-fucking-doo.

It was now one day till the helicopter would arrive. I laid low and didn't see anything of Hannigan. He stayed in his tent the entire day while I tried to calm my nerves, sheltering from the rain in the high hide, or under the canvas covering over the raptor pit. He was going down. I just had to wait.

"You get to do the honours, my fine friend," I said to the raptor in the pit. "We've been giving you shit to eat. Now you get to hunt. How about it, huh?" I glanced at it. "Poor bastard. You can't possibly understand. I'm going to have to kill you, once you've done your job."

The raptor didn't snarl at me, or try to climb the steep sides of the pit. It just looked at me, as if memorising my face.

"I'll have to kill you," I said. "Or else you'll got pack to your friends and tell them where our camp is. Then you'll all come and kill us. Can't have that. You and these bastards…you're all the same. But me…I'm the intruder. I'm the cancer."

I still didn't really get it, no grasp on the situation. I was so full of shit. I was the crusader, the saviour. And salvation would be mine. Mine alone.

Finally, night came, and with it the usual rolls of thunder and cracks of distant lightning. In that pounding rain no-one questioned me when I offered to stay on guard. Slowly, one by one, I watched the others retreat into their little squares of light and warmth, shielded from the wilderness by a few millimetres of canvas. Eventually, there was only one light, and that was a tiny camping-stove inside Hannigan's tent. As I watched, a shadow shifted across the light. So he was in there, and he was moving.

It was time to begin Phase One of my plan. I stole some meat from the kitchen tent and left little titbits in a breadcrumb trail in the sodden mud leading directly from the pit to Hannigan's tent. While I didn't really expect the raptor to be that stupid, I knew that the raptor knew what I wanted it to do.

Next, I removed the claymores and tripwires from the pit and stored them safely in the hardware shack. When I came back, I was carrying a phosphorus flare. Standing over the raptor pit in the dark, I looked down into the pool of black and lit the flare. It sputtered and the scene was thrown into sharp relief, hard pale green light throwing deep shadows and highlighting the glinting raindrops as they fell.

"Here, catch," I said, and tossed it into the pit. It sent the raptor crazy. It started to writhe and scream, churning up the mud in the bottom of the pit. Quickly I pulled out my pistol and waited for the spark of lightning. Within ten seconds electricity arced through the boiling sky a few miles away. I waited. Then the sound came, a great wall of booming noise.

I fired the pistol and shot right through one of the chains that held the raptor down. The thunder masked the gunshot, and with that, I ran. I skirted between all the tents and then crouched behind a sandbag wall. Slowly I peeped my head above it.

Mud was flying from the pit, clumps of wet earth. In the eerie green light of the flare, the raptor was suddenly _there_, standing at the lip of the pit. It knocked over the poles supporting the cloth roof, and the flare went out. I couldn't see anything.

When lightning next flashed, the raptor was gone. Cautiously I stood up and inched my way towards the pit, my gun at the ready.

When I got near I saw the meat was gone. And then I heard a shout. Then a crash. Then a roar.

I raced towards Hannigan's tent just in time for a flash of lightning to polarise the scene. There was the raptor, its head held high, blood dripping from its jaws. And there, in amongst the crumpled remains of the tent, was Hannigan's body with its face bloody and its arm missing.

I felt a sudden wave of righteous satisfaction, but before I could react, the raptor jumped two metres straight up. I swung around to track it but it was gone, over the sandbag wall and away.

"Raptor!" I shouted. "The raptor's escaped!"

I ran straight past Hannigan's body, reached the sandbag wall and jammed the gun into my shoulder, aiming down the hill. Shit, shit shit. If the raptor got back to its pack then they'd all come. And that was not something I wanted.

The fields below lit up as the storm flared again. Briefly, I saw the raptor, already fifty metres away, running at incredible speed across the rows of crops. It was heading for the treeline. I squeezed off a few rounds towards it, but they all went wide, and then everything was dark.

I swore into the empty air.

Behind me I could just hear the busy noises of the rest of the camp waking up, scrambling for their weapons, disorientated.

"It killed Han!" shouted someone."

"Get it!"

In a split-second there were people beside me, firing down across the fields, though there was nothing to be seen. The strobing yellow flashes from the gunfire flared across my vision. Volleys of shots released clouds of smoke. It was already too late.

Denver screamed for the men to cease fire. He was livid.

"They killed Han! They killed him! Fucking lizards! They'll pay! We'll hunt down every last one of them!" He turned to the wilderness. "I'll kill you all! We're coming, you bastards! We're coming!"

The jungle gave no answer.

* * *

_ORIGINAL A/N: Thanks to __Scorpio for the multiple reviews (hope you enjoy the rest of the story as much as you enjoyed those first few chapters :D) and Evilsloth as well, for keeping reading. _

_ So:_


	16. Search and Destroy

******XV: Search And Destroy**

******Day 149**

******2052 hours**

* * *

And then they were gone. After an entire day of seething calm they had roared out into the jungle, jeep headlights knifing through the darkness and highlighting flying rain droplets in the air. Ramirez, Coles, Denver, all of them. Except me. 

Chopper. 2300 Friday 27. Hill South.

I wanted to move: I wanted to go right now. But the researchers had been stupid: Hill South was in enemy territory, raptor territory, and I wasn't going to stay out there any longer than necessary. I thought the others' little crusade would keep them busy long enough for me to make my escape.

Chopper. 2300 Friday 27. Hill South.

I had it all laid out perfectly in my mind. I had been told to stay here and watch the camp. At exactly 2230 I would head out in one of our stolen jeeps to Hill South. I wouldn't drive any faster than necessary. The helicopter would land: I would be waiting. I assumed the pilots were paid mercenaries – that they wouldn't know I wasn't part of the research team. If worst came to worst I would put my gun to the pilot's head and force him to lift me out. The rest of the group would be left here to wallow in their insanity.

Chopper. 2300 Friday 27. Hill South.

Ah, irony. By forcing me to stay back here at camp, they thought they were punishing me for letting the raptor escape; in reality, this was going to be my salvation.

Presently I heard gunshots in the distance. I didn't worry myself over it.

When I heard the machineguns open up and the explosions and the animal screams, I threw back my head and laughed. Was this really how it was all going to end? With me simply sitting here calmly before strolling away into safety? But it made sense to me – no last epic battle. My war was ending with a whimper rather than a bang, with a slow withdrawal of forces instead of a dramatic final confrontation. That was the way it was supposed to end, wasn't it?

The radio squawked. "Long!"

Shit.

"Long, respond, over! We are in fucking deep shit! They're everywhere! They're-"

There was a burst of static. I tried not to listen to their pleas. I didn't even recognise the voice but it sounded like Coles. I wondered what had happened to Denver - wasn't he supposed to be the leader?

"Long! We're in the raptor nest! The jeep is gone! It was a rex, man! A fucking rex! Fucking T-Rex just came out of nowhere! It took Clark! Denver's wounded! We need evac!"

I managed to stop myself picking up the radio just in time. I had to stay focused on my mission. I had to stay cool. They deserved this and I wasn't going to come to their rescue and I wasn't going to save them.

"-up, Long! I repeat, hurry the fuck up! Long? Long! Shit, man, he's gone! He's gone, we're fucking dead meat! We're-"

The radio cut off. I thought I should have felt a grim sense of satisfaction, and wondered why I didn't.

* * *

And then it was time to go. 

Malevolent branches swatted against my windscreen, flaring white in the headlamps. I couldn't see anything beyond that. My world was filled with the roaring of the engine as I pushed the screaming jeep along the mud track, scything away the overhanging plants, wrestling to keep the ungainly vehicle from slipping in the mud and careening off into the thickets. The jeep growled as it thumped through a series of potholes, then I felt a jerk and an odd sense of calm as the jeep and I bucked over a steep hill and sailed through the air on the other side. It landed with a crash and I almost lost control then, rocketing across the uneven terrain. But I managed to straighten out my course.

The storm was getting bad. Already the road I was on was so muddy that if I had slowed down I would have sank right in.The rain didn't help, either. Sometimes the jungle would light up white, the leaves becoming translucent for a second, the rain shimmering in the flash of light as somewhere, a lightning bolt stabbed down.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, I was thinking. Where the hell was Hill South?

I had hastily grabbed some guns and equipment – just in case - from the hardware hut, shoved them under the jeep's grimy tarpaulin, and set off. I could hear heavy things sliding to and fro in the rear of the vehicle.

The jeep was fitted with a built-in GPS system, so I knew roughly where I was, but the map on the screen didn't show any roads. I had stuck a piece of blutack on the screen to mark the location of Hill South. The primal roaring of the engine was ringing in my ears. I found it hard to concentrate on working out where to go. For a few seconds I risked a longer glance at the map. I felt heat on my face, and looked up sharply.

Directly in front of me and closing fast there was a raging wall of flame. I had time to realise it was a tree trunk that had fallen across the roadway, and that it was inexplicably on fire. Then instinct took over and I screwed my eyes shut, stamped my foot on the brake and twisted the wheel in desperation. There was a confusion of noise and then a jolt.

I opened my eyes. The jeep had turned side on to the road and swerved into a tree. The right-hand door was bent out of shape from the impact. I got out of the vehicle and stared at the flaming blockade. The heat was almost unbearable, and sparks licked at my feet. There was the smell of petrol in the air.

Someone had started this fire. Who?

Close by, I heard a raptor's scream. I suddenly realised that I was out in the middle of the forest on foot and that was not a good thing. I scrambled back into the jeep, gunned the engine, cursed, tried it again, felt it catch and reversed back onto the road. I could find another route to Hill South. It was going to be okay. The fire could have just been a random lightning strike. I raced away from the burning barricade and tried to work out where else to go.

* * *

I retraced my tyre tracks at top speed and now I was racing along the Ridge Road – a precarious stretch of battered tarmac halfway up the cliffs that divided the island's central plateau from the lowlands. The road was slippery in the rain, and I was going as slow as I could risk. Hopefully I could swing south again once I got to the next junction, and head down to Hill South. But it wasn't to be. 

As I rounded an outcropping in the cliff face, a great heap of rubble and rocks loomed into view. The road had been blocked by an avalanche, a rockfall. This time I didn't even have the precious seconds it took to brake, only time to spin the wheel and send the vehicle hurtling from the road and down, down the almost-vertical hillside.

For a moment there was a strange feeling of weightlessness, and calm, as the jeep hung in the cold air. I lifted my foot from the accelerator and the echoing roar died in my ears. Then the jungle rushed up, I rushed down, and the jeep plunged through the forest ceiling. I saw only a rush of vegetation in front of the windscreen before some gnarled limb of a great tree struck the chassis. The left headlight exploded in a shower of glass and the jeep rolled over.

In the darkness I found myself thrown around the driver's compartment, my head thumping on the ceiling and everything dissolving into one continuous explosion of pain. I got the impression the jeep was sliding down a hillside on its roof, bulldozing through ferns, bouncing off trees, tumbling over exposed rock.

Then the jeep rolled right over and I fell back into my seat. Everything stopped; the vehicle was left gently bouncing on its suspension with the engine coughing quietly.

How was the engine still running? I was dazed.

Looking around, I saw that the jeep had stopped because it had fallen into a low depression, some sort of dirt track. The track curved away into the dark in both directions, but there were no signs. I shrugged, and simply drove forward.

Almost immediately I saw this was a mistake. The road became steadily more uneven and bumpy. Then I was forced to stop once again.

"Holy shit," I said aloud.

In front of the jeep, lying across the road in a heap, was the carcass of some huge beast, a plant-eating dinosaur. It was perhaps a week old, and flies buzzed in and around the putrid holes that had been torn in its flanks. I got out of the jeep and walked around the body, trying not to breathe in the stench. Further along the road, there were more carcasses, in varying states of decay, left to rot and fester. The road ended abruptly with a sharp rise over which I couldn't see.

I looked down and around, and only when I stepped backwards and put my foot in an enormous muddy footprint, did I realise where I must be. "Oh fuck," I whispered. "Oh-"

Rex nest.

I was interrupted by a moaning sound, somewhere ahead, beyond the rise, It sounded human. All my instincts told me I should run like hell. But what is man, I thought, if he cannot deny his instincts? Instead, I pulled a grenade launcher and a halogen lamp from the boot of the jeep and began to creep forward. A bone snapped under my heel and the moaning became more insistent. Climbing the rise in the road, there seemed to be light coming from the hollow beyond, glinting off the falling raindrops. With a sense of trepidation I hauled myself up over the mound, and down into the Rex nest. The torch beam cast a scything circle of blue light on the blackness of my surroundings. Into the Rex nest. T-Rex. Jesus.

The Tyrannosaur was there, alright. It was lying in a blood-soaked heap in the centre of the nest. It wasn't moving, and it was quite obviously dead, but I cradled the grenade launcher in my hands and advanced cautiously anyway. Close up, in the blue light of the torch, I could see craters with charred edges that had been blown in the Tyrannosaur's body. Even lying down on its side, it was taller than I was. I knelt and ran a hand over the burnt and scaly skin. There were gashes and cuts all along the back of its neck, and a hole in its head. With morbid fascination I felt inside the hole, and then wiped my finger on the hard skin, leaving a grey smear of what I was sure must have been dinosaur brains.

Through the rain I heard the pitiful moaning sound again. "Long…" I heard. With a start I fumbled with my torch and turned it off.

Clark was lying there in the mud among the broken corpses, his leg twisted at an odd angle, thick blood coating him. His face was hidden by the darkness. He was croaking pathetically. I turned on the flashlight and flicked the beam over his body. He had a slick of black blood on his face. A ring of jagged holes pierced his chest.

I scrambled over the torn limbs and crouched beside him. "Hey Clark," I said. "Looks like you got what you deserved."

He moaned. "Long…the others…the raptors…everywhere. You've got to…"

I chuckled. "No can do, Clark. I'm leaving."

"Dearing."

My heart spasmed and jumped in my chest.

"Dearing…he killed the Rex…and he killed…"

I interrupted him. "Dearing's dead."

Clark laughed, a disconcerting rasp.

"You're delirious. Dearing killed the Rex?" I looked round behind me, at the knife and bullet marks in its neck. Understanding sunk in. I turned back and looked out into the jungle, suddenly full of an unseen terror.

Clark, as if some dam had been burst, suddenly spoke in a rush. "He killed Ramirez and he killed the Rex and…we stopped because the road was blocked off, and there was meat hung up for the Rex, and the Rex came and it took me and it got Denver and it…he killed it, Long, with his fucking knife, his fucking knife, his…"

But my attention had been drawn to an unsteady line of bootprints leading off over the lip of the Rex nest and out between the trees. With Clark still babbling behind me, I climbed the side of the pit and looked out into the luminous jungle. The footprints led away, down the hill, towards…

There was a scream, this time nearby. I caught a glimpse of teeth and claws at the bottom of the hill, and heard an answering gibber from behind me. Clumsy with terror I fired off a grenade into the trees. It hit a great trunk in midair and the explosion flared blue for a second, before flaming debris lit up the darkness and blasted out over the forest floor. I slid down the side of the nest and stumbled up the other side, half falling down the rise again to the jeep.

Back in the Rex nest, I heard Clark scream my name and then he was drowned out by the roar of the engine. The jeep's headlights flashed on and whitened the surrounding area. I reversed and pulled a handbrake turn, spinning right round until the vehicle was pointing away down the uneven road. I took a quick look behind me. Raptors were leaping over the lip of the Rex nest, then disappearing down into the frenzy below. One of them climbed up out again, and roared into the night. I gunned the engine..

As I heard the screams of the raptors behind, the dirt track stretched out ahead, rising and falling, undulating like a sea. As I crested a ridge I saw more raptors running down the track towards me. The speedometer crept up from twenty to thirty to forty. Not fast enough.

I rode down into a depression and my view disappeared, then up out again. A raptor shrieked in the glare of my headlights. I leaned backward and felt the thump, watched its body fly over the bonnet, crack the windscreen and roll up over the roof. In the mirror, I watched the raptor's body hit the ground and roll over and over in the mud. The track forked ahead and I glimpsed, for an instant, a signpost reading 'Left for Geothermal Plant'. I took the right.

My heart was still racing but as I thumped and bumped through the rain, I couldn't calm down. In the distance there was sporadic firing and somewhere, an explosion. Dearing, alive? I imagined him out there, prowling from tree to tree, a glinting knife in his hand, mud smeared on his cheeks. No way. Clark was mad and Dearing was dead.

I checked my watch and thanked the good lord for backlights. The time was 2235. I had around twenty minutes to reach the helicopter. But where was it? The track I was following headed uphill, and I hoped I could get to high ground, the work out where to go.

Dearing couldn't be still out there, could he? But that made a horrible kind of sense to me. Him killing the rest, setting them up for the rex. I saw, through a break in the trees, a flash of orange in the forest near the raptor nest. Good riddance. He must have blocked off the roads, too. Why?

The jeep shuddered. I thought of the T-Rex, with the animal slashes down its back. He must have somehow gotten on top of it, cut and cut and cut until it was dead. Like a raptor. Gone native. And considering the natives of this island-

A thumping detonation shook me out of my thoughts. Somewhere up ahead, there was bright orange mushroom of boiling smoke rising above the jungle. It was followed by blue flashes, crackling in the sky like fireworks.

What was going on out there?

Distracted by the blinding light show blazing above, I didn't see the immensity of flesh and teeth blocking the road ahead, roaring its defiance, until it was far too late.

* * *

_ORIGINAL A/N: So sorry to keep you waiting._

_Scorpio, thanks very much for your reviews. By the time you read this, I'm sure you will have realised that quite a lot is going on on Isla Nublar. :D_

_ Thanks to Edcrab, for his glowing review. I am positively humbled, and can only really express my thanks and my happiness that this story is enjoyed so much._

_ And a big thank you to TinyXipe, who beta read this TO THE EXTREME, meaning the ending is sorted out and, finally, this story can end._


	17. FUBAR

**XVI: F.U.B.A.R.**

**Day 149**

**2236 hours**

I didn't have time to examine the beast in front of me closely; all I can tell you was that it was big and mean and had a spine on its back. That didn't matter to me at that point. Its breath was blowing in my face as it roared, head low to the road.

Before I could even spin the wheel we collided. It was a big dinosaur, but my jeep was going close to sixty miles per hour. The front bonnet struck the side of its head and it reared up, howling. I felt myself thrown forward and I knocked my head on the dashboard. All around me was a deafening storm of stomping feet, lit by erratic lightning. The windows smashed; the foot came down; the jeep tilted backwards. It was standing on the rear end of the vehicle.

The canvas roof above me suddenly ripped off, and there it was, a twisted horse-face frowning down. All I saw was snapping jaws, ripping the roll bars from the chassis. I fumbled for a weapon as the hot breath blew in my face. My fingers found a shotgun. I raised it and fired upwards, burying a spread of shells in the creature's nose. Immediately it pulled back, mouth wide open. I pumped and fired again, this time in its mouth. The dinosaur yowled. It was a sound so loud that it left you with nothing but a quiet ringing in your ears. I fired the shotgun one final time. Though I couldn't hear the gunshot, I saw the blast tear into the inside of the dinosaur's mouth. The jeep crashed back to the ground as its foot lifted, and I was rammed backwards into my seat.

My foot was still on the accelerator and the wheels hit the ground spinning at full tilt. I was suddenly shot away from the gigantic animal thrashing in rage and pain behind me, and the bumping, thumping passage over the uneven road seemed calm by comparison.

By this point I was in a state of panic. I didn't know how much time I had left till the helicopter arrived, but I knew it couldn't be long.

I suddenly emerged onto a clear stretch of road on the spine of a ridge, and looked out on the jungle.

On the left, much of it was in flames. Dearing had somehow managed to start a forest fire, even with the driving rain, and as the inferno raged across the expanse of rainforest, consuming plants and animals alike, I suddenly realised the scale on which he was fighting his war. Where the rainfall hit the fire and evaporated there were fast clouds of water vapour rolling across the landscape.

Where the fire hadn't spread there were little flashes of munitions. They all seemed to be converging on one point. The canopy was pierced by a pillar of flame, and then lit from below by a spurt of gunfire. Answering shots flashed from nearby.

Christ, I thought. He's fighting them all.

From up here I could see Hill South too, and it was closer than I had thought. On my right - the opposite side of the ridge from the fighting - it thrust up from the trees like the hump of some enormous sleeping animal, a clean spot in a tangle of leaves. Ahead the road split off left and right. I knew which fork I would take.

But yet again, Dearing had blocked off the right fork with several flaming logs, far too thick to smash through. I knew I would never be able to get the jeep through the surrounding jungle, and for a second I seriously considered trying to make it on foot. Then I heard the roar of the massive dinosaur I had just escaped ring out behind me, somewhere close by. With a mounting sense of hysteria, I turned the jeep left, towards the fighting.

It was dawning on me that I was being funnelled by Dearing's blockade, being forced to some unknown location. Where was he taking me? I looked out to my left. The gunfire was more concentrated now, five different streaks of white light spraying out in all directions. Moving slowly away from them was one rogue flicker, and I realised that Dearing was leading them away. Leading them to where?

I studied the topography of the land. I had been forced in an ever-tightening spiral pattern by Dearing's blockades. The spiral was leading right down into patchy basin of thick jungle, with high fingers of rock rearing over the treeline. I kept a look out for any opportunity to break right, towards Hill South, but there was none so far.

The jungle enveloped me again and my driving got more erratic. I was freaking out. To my left, through the jungle, I could see Dearing and the others trading shots. Bullets where flying everywhere, and I don't think half of them knew who they were shooting at. The jungle was exploding in delirious light.

And everywhere there were the raptors. I could see them only as dark shapes in the trees, but they were out there. The entire area was a confusion of bodies and bullets and claws and fire, men fighting men, men fighting raptors, men fighting each other, and somewhere out there, Dearing. Shrill wails pierced the air.

Up ahead I could see little figures scurrying across the road. The way forward curved slowly left, while on the right I caught a bright orange glow through the trees. As I raced forwards a sea of tiny birdlike dinosaurs, the ones we called Chickens, flowed across the road. A few dozen metres to the right the fire was blazing. One tree exploded like a bomb, the sap inside it quick-boiling and then spraying wooden shrapnel everywhere. The Chickens were fleeing the fire. I felt a bump as I rolled through their masses, and then they were behind me.

Lightning struck and I saw the road bend sharply to the left up ahead, curling steeply downhill. I cut the corner and thudded over elephant grass for a second, then drifted back onto the track. It was less of a road here than simply a scar of ground where no trees grew. The fighting seemed to be moving off, away from me, downhill. But that was the way the road went as well. Still there had been no chance to turn right, try and escape. I was locked into ever-decreasing circles spiralling down to the centre of it all. To me, I the road was spiralling down towards Dearing, and the heart of the island.

Spiralling down to extinction.

And then, with one more sharp bend of the road, I was there, in the heart of it, and indistinct figures were trading shots across the road, and the raptors were everywhere. I ducked as bullets whipped past my head. There was an explosion on the road ahead, and then I saw someone running into the undergrowth. A raptor giving chase froze in its tracks as I drove towards it. It snarled, and then the front bumper jerked upwards with a jolt, then came back down again.

Another explosion and a tree fell across the road. I swerved to avoid it and found myself bouncing between the trees, missing them by mere inches more by luck than by design. The front of the jeep rose and fell as I wrestled the jeep down the hill.

The jungle retreated. I took my foot off the accelerator and the jeep coasted silently across the barren ground. Here was a wide clearing in the jungle, the ground bare. But there were skeletons – huge dinosaur skeletons resting like beached whales in the mud, their whitened ivory reflecting my one remaining headlight. The arching ribs formed tunnels, the long limb bones lay in heaps. I gently pressed the gas pedal down, turning left to avoid the bones of some immense long-necked plant eater. Mist rolled through the elephant's graveyard.

I emerged from the macabre cemetery into an open space, where little craters studded the ground and other corpses, some with flesh still hanging from their frames, lay in tatters. In the middle of it all, the other hunters – Coles, Bradley, Marlow, the newbie with the glasses - Dexter, a wounded Denver – formed a tight circle of outward-pointing guns.

As I rolled to a halt nearby, grabbing my shotgun from the side seat, I saw that the craters contained eggs. Lots of eggs.

Coles noticed me. "Long!" he screamed. "Long! Thank god you're here! It's Dearing, he-"

As my eyes narrowed and I prepared to jam my foot down on the accelerator, run him down like a dog, a chorus of unearthly howls erupted from the surrounding mists. One by one, dark shapes appeared through the rain and then morphed into the ghostly forms of raptors. There were ten or twelve of them, in a ring around us, and they began to stride purposefully inwards, tightening the circle.

The raptor nest, I thought. Why did it have to be the raptor nest?

Coles and the others started to run towards the jeep, dragging Denver behind them. "Don't fire!" I screamed. But Dexter and Bradley raised their guns and did exactly that, shooting and missing at the pale raptors. As soon as the first shot ran out the raptors all screeched and began to race at top speed towards us.

Quickly, I stepped on the gas. The engine roared but the jeep hardly moved. Panicking, I looked behind me, saw the back wheel sinking into the mud. Coles reached the jeep and dived into the back. He aimed his pistol at the back of my head, shouted "Drive!"

I stamped over and over again on the accelerator pedal, and behind, the spinning wheel churned the sodden ground. The jeep tilted to one side slightly.

"It's stuck!" I screamed. Denver was thrown into the back of the vehicle. In a matter of seconds the raptors had covered half the distance towards us, and in five or six more they would be on top of us. I checked my shotgun, realised I only had one shell.

Bradley, Marlow and Dexter began to push feebly at the back of the jeep while Coles cracked off a series of shots. One raptor's head split open and it fell, the rest kept coming. At the last moment, the back wheel came free, and the three men pushing leapt onto the rear of the vehicle and clung there. There was an explosion of noise and exhaust and we were launched forward. Jaws snapped in the wing mirror, but we were already away.

One raptor tried to jump right up onto the hood, but no sooner had its clawed feet touched metal that everyone in the jeep fired at once and it was blasted away. We sped up and out of the raptor nest, sailing through the air over its lip, and then losing the chasing creatures in the endless mist. The men on the back stopped firing. Bradley let out a whoop.

"Take that you motherfuckers! Take that!"

"Shit! Ahead!" yelled Coles.

In front of us, where a river ran deep across our path, the fire was eating its way along the shoulders of the jungle that flanked the raptor nest. The flames were spreading across both sides. The ring of fire was closing. The napalm towering. The rotors overhead.

"There should be a bridge!" shouted Coles in my ear, his pistol still pressed into my neck. "There's a bridge!"

There was a bridge. A concrete ramp rose between the flames. But as we got nearer I saw that it was broken, and that the entire mid-section of the crossing had fallen away into the river, some ten metres below. And all the time, the flames were closing in around us.

I screamed a warning at the others.

The front two wheels hit the ramp and shuddered up at a twenty-five degree angle. In front of us, the chasm yawned and as the moment froze I examined the girders that protruded from the jagged concrete. The rear wheels mounted the ramp. There was a sudden silence for a moment and then everybody was screaming as we rocketed across the gab between the ramps, cleared it, pancaked down on the other side and carried on driving, swerving slightly as I regained control. The screams turned to whoops of jubilation, and I felt the cold metal of the gun retreat from my skin.

Even I found myself laughing, despite it all, even though the very people I had sworn to leave to their deaths here were now sitting in the back. In this moment of relief, I didn't care. For once, I was their saviour.

Dearing evidently didn't count on us getting over the bridge, because there were no more barricades and I was able to head straight for Hill South. My watch said 2355. We were going to make it.

"Where are you going, man?" shouted Coles behind me, happiness still tingeing his voice. "We gotta get back to camp!"

"There's a helicopter landing on Hill South in five minutes! We're leaving!" I replied.

This was greeted with cheers. "Fuck, man! We're leaving!" laughed Coles.

A few minutes out from Hill South I suddenly heard helicopter blades. Was I imagining it? But no, I saw Dexter jerk his head up in the wing mirror, and I realised it was coming. As we turned a corner I saw lights in the sky, heading straight for us over the flames that raged over the raptor's valley.

"There she blows!" shouted someone. Watching the twin navigation lights start to descend I realised we were too far out. Marlow voiced my thoughts.

"We're not going to make it!"

I urged the jeep to go faster, but it was already going at top speed. Coles shouted something and in the mirror I saw them throwing out the junk in the back of the vehicle, lightening the load. I didn't think it would be enough.

The helicopter was close now, the metal underbelly reflecting the orange flicker of the fire. Suddenly a thought hit me. I shouted to Coles, "there's a flaregun in there somewhere! Send up a flare!"

The road became suddenly smoother and we shot forwards. Behind me I heard a sizzle over the engine and then something bright and green arced into the air. The helicopter appeared to see it, because it began to sink lower in the sky over Hill South. A navigation light blinked twice in recognition.

All at once we arrived at the lower slopes of the hill and started upwards through the long grass. The chopper's spotlight cast a harsh, blinding glare over the hill. The wind of the rotor blades whipped rain in our faces through the broken windscreen, the noise of it filling our ears. Coles stood up in the back of the jeep, shouting. The grass around us was like an undulating sea, ripples spreading out from where the helicopter was coming down and flattening the vegetation underneath it.

We reached the top of the hill and started to slow down. We had made it.

One of the helicopter pilots opened the door, still five metres from the ground, and leaned out, waving to us. I took one hand off the wheel and waved back.

Somewhere, even above the thunder of the rotor blades, there was an echoing _whump_.

A bright streak of flame lashed out from the jungle at the bottom of the hill. It lanced upwards and struck the side of the helicopter. In an instant, it exploded in a rolling red cloud of debris, fingers of smoke jabbing outwards. The rotor blades broke off and scythed away. The fireball raged and then boiled away into smoke. What was left fell to the ground in slow motion, trailing fire.

Even as the cheers died in the throats of the men behind me, I spun the steering wheel. The jeep spun seven-twenty degrees, and finally the tires caught the ground, and we stopped, and then accelerated away from the top of the hill.

The rest of the men were silent as we bounced down the slope and away down the road, past the waiting figures of the raptors, past the silent jungle while flames raged in the distance. Only Denver broke the silence among us, muttering.

"We are fucked, we are all so fucked, we are so fucking dead-"

And so on.

Through unspoken agreement, I headed back to camp. Where else could we go? The fire was spreading across the island and soon there would be nothing left. Our only chance was to find somewhere to hunker down and weather it out. Perhaps, later, we'd head out to the lab and try to find protection there. It didn't seem safe though. Dearing was still out there, and the raptors were closing in.

There was one final surprise left. As we came to the top of a rise and into view of our camp, I suddenly slammed on the brakes. We all stared, slack-jawed, at the sight which greeted us. Denver was the first to voice our feelings.

"Ho-ly shit."

In front of us, towering into the sky over our camp, brightly coloured flames roared into the night, funnelling smoke upwards through the storm. One single tower of fire, reaching up to the heavens. There was an odd smell on the air, not just the stench of burning but something else. I struggled to place it.

"Fuck…me…" whispered Coles.

The weed fields were burning.


	18. Purple Haze

_Still going here. It's not the end, Evilsloth! You'll know when it is. _

_ Thanks Joims. Don't worry, it won't be too long now._

_And thanks to you, Scorpio, even if you are a little behind. Might be a while before you read this. :_

_Back to the story. Noes! The weed is burning! _

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**XVII: Purple Haze  
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**Day 149**

**2315 hours**

By the time we got back there, the fire had spread across our crops and surrounded the hill. Now it was making a start on the nearby jungle.

As soon as we got back we debated what to do. The raptors knew where we were and they were after us. Now we had been in their nest, it seemed only a matter of time – and not much of it – before they attacked. Add Dearing to the equation and we all felt our only option was to get off the island.

Luckily for us, we had always kept inflatable rubber dinghies down at the old boathouse from the beginning, where we had come in. Through binoculars we could see our boat was still out in the bay, as if it had somehow missed all that had happened and was still waiting patiently for Hannigan to take it on a supply run.

But when we sent Bradley and Marlow down to the river to prep the dinghies, they reported back with the bad news. Dearing had been at them: he had torn great gashes in them with his knife. They would never even inflate, let alone float.

We ordered them back at once and began to prepare for one last stand. Dexter climbed the high hide and kept lookout while they returned. Marlow joined him later.

There didn't seem anything left to do. Perhaps it was all the weed smoke in the air, but there was simply a sense of melancholy. We weren't going to get out of here alive. A few of us exhibited a certain gung-ho, give-it-a-shot cheerfulness as we fixed the sandbag walls in place, checked rifles, passed out ammunition. Coles had the idea of taking the jeep up to the research centre and holding out there, or better yet finding the underground factory and sealing ourselves off. But the jeep had little fuel left. We wouldn't have got far. And so we waited, an all the time the air filled with pot smoke, and the fields burned.

Coles, however, was hysterical still. "What the fuck are we gonna do now, huh? We're dead meat! The raptors are gonna come and kill us! Or Dearing's going to! Or we'll fucking burn! What's Dearing doing out there? He can't be alive! Unless he's somehow…shit, man, shit, he's in with the fucking raptors, he's fucking gone native, he's _friends _with them, they're all chums-"

I let him carry on. I realised I was stoned and felt a dim sense of foreboding in the back of my mind. But what the hell. Who cares, man?

"Seriously, man, you should chill out. Try breathing exercises…" drawled Bradley.

* * *

At some point, and I don't know how long it was, a cry went up from the high hide. They had been singing loudly for a while now but this was different.

"In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps...whoah, raptors! Raptors, man!"

Denver was moaning softly on the ground and Coles had descended into delirious babbling. There was so much weed in the air now that they were tripping. Perhaps I was too. The fire seemed to echo with an eerie whistling, a long-drawn out shriek, pitch swinging from high to low and back again. Every so often I thought I sensed something behind me, but whenever I turned round there was nothing. Even from here I could feel the heat on my skin from the fire.

"Hey! Nice of you lizards to show up!" yelled someone.

At the mention of the words 'lizards', Coles suddenly jumped out and screamed "fuckers!" at the top of his voice. Denver moaned louder. Bradley, who was sitting on a deckchair making swooping motions with his hand and child's aeroplane noises with his mouth, looked up with a start.

"Long, why are you melting?"

"I'm not melting," I said. "Am I?"

"Hey guys! Like, lizards!"

"Oh, fuck you! _Fuck you! _Fucking lizards!"

Then, through the curtain of flames that surrounded us, I glimpsed them. They looked bigger than when I had last seen them, and whiter. There they were, in a black and orange landscape, white as sheets. Looking closer, I thought I saw red markings on their faces, almost like war paint. Just behind the raptors, I'd swear I saw a dark human figure, but then he was gone, and it was just another raptor emerging into the flames.

One of them let out a cry into the night. The others yammered and gibbered, a sound that seemed to my malfunctioning brain almost like human speech speeded up. Coles' words rolled together into one gargling litany of hate, and he grabbed one of our mounted M60s.

The scene had a surreal calm to it, before he opened up with the machinegun.

Bradley cried out and I opened my eyes wide. All about me strange shapes whirled and contorted. The light flashes from the machinegun hit me with rapid fire thunderclaps, striking my arms and chest. I recoiled backwards from the blows. From the top of the high hide (which seemed to be wavering upwards and downwards) I saw Dexter and Marlow open up with a chorus of whoops. The raptors scattered, and started to run _through _the fire at us.

Bradley started firing but not at the raptors. He just fired, blazing away into the air. I grabbed another mounted machinegun and began to tear into the raptors running through the inferno. One burst into silver fragments, burning away into a twitching heap. I held down the firing stud and swung the gun round.

The air was thick with the crackling impacts of the machinegun fire, and all around me there seemed to be projectiles whizzing through the air. Even though no-one was firing at me, I could swear I felt the bullets pass near. One hit me right in the hand but I kept on firing. Other rounds jabbed into my torso. But I kept firing, calmly.

One raptor got the hill. It started running up towards us, but both me and Coles turned our guns on it and blew it apart.

The rest of the raptors were concentrating on the high hide. One leapt and clung to its metal side, swiftly followed by two more. A figure at the top of the structure fired downwards and knocked a raptor to the ground, but the other two began swinging violently. Another gunshot and one fell off. But the high hide was slowly tipping over, out of the jungle, towards the clearing where the fire raged. The rest of the raptors jumped on it, and it began to topple.

I heard a scream that seemed to stretch out and go on forever as, from some unknown detonation, the top of the high hide burst into flame. It fell sideways, crashing through the barrier of trees and vines and creepers. Finally the whole scaffolding broke free of the forest and fell to the ground. The observation cage, where Dexter and Marlow were, landed on its side and rolled over the ground through the fire. It came to a halt and as it fell reminded me of a coin set spinning, slowly spiralling down until it lay flat on the ground. Then I heard a crack, and the cage exploded.

For a fleeting second, I thought of Marlow's novel that would never be published.

With the high hide down, the raptors started coming up the hill. Coles and me hosed them with fire, but they were fast and hard to hit, and there were too many. My gun clicked dry and I snatched up my shotgun, back-pedalling. The rest of the pack charged up the hill, towards us.

"Everyone move back!" I shouted. They didn't need telling. All around our hill we were being overrun. Coles kept on firing at the onrushing pack, and then they were on him and we couldn't see him anymore. In the circle of snarling, thrashing shapes, the machinegun flailed in the air and sprayed wildly, and then fell silent. Denver was lying down, shooting around him with a long-barrelled rifle. The raptors swarmed over the battlements, rushed the sandbag walls and trampled the tents.

One raptor jumped onto the roof of the hardware shed and screamed at us. Around me, eerie wails sounded, like the screeching of a million violins. Denver screamed something, and the next thing I knew there was a whoosh. I instinctively ducked.

Something bright and hot rocketed towards the hardware shed. I saw Denver cradling a smoking rocket launcher in his arms, and shouted "No!" and then there was time only to scream.

Denver's rocket hit the hardware shed. It detonated, and inside, the explosion set off countless rounds of ammunition. Bursts of light tore a thousand holes in the wooden sides of the shed, and bullets pinged outwards. I lay on the ground and rounds tore the place to shreds. Raptors were cut down, tents were ripped up, rounds pinged off metal poles. Then the grenades stored in there went up as well.

The shed blew outwards and upwards. Showers of mud and molten metal were blasted in all directions in a chain reaction of booming detonations, blinding flickers of fire. The fuel drums for the jeeps went up too, and fire rolled high into the air in a shimmering mushroom cloud. Hot flecks of dirt rained down as the fires raged. Like fireworks. That crackle, and that weird vibration in your throat.

As the ringing faded from my ears I scrambled to my feet. The raptors were screaming, screaming in pain, screaming in rage, screaming in fear. I couldn't see anything except black night above and heat all around me. I saw a gap in the flames and staggered towards it.

Bradley's fat face swam into focus. "What are we gonna do?" he yelled at me.

I ran.

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We half-ran, half-fell down the rocky hillside. The top of the hill was a swirling vortex of fire and pot-smoke. We stumbled into the forest, knowing that the raptors were behind us, their snarls getting louder all the time. On and on we ran, pushing past dark trunks and wet ferns. Behind us and all around us, the fire had spread, and the jungle was going up in flames.

I had no hope. I was running out of some ancient survival instinct, running just because I had to, just to buy a few more seconds of life. The flames swallowed the forest whole, moving faster than any creature could possibly run. I was dimly aware that we were running uphill, and ahead the jungle cut off abruptly. I could see open sky.

Bradley slowed down and turned back to me as he went. "It's the coast!"

All at once the jungle was behind us and we were running across open ground. The night air was cold, and we were high up, on top of a cliff. Above us, Pteranodons were circling in panic, and around us, small animals and dinosaurs from compys to little dome-headed things I had never seen before were fleeing the fire.

We stopped at the cliff-edge and I fell to my knees out of sheer exhaustion. Bradley vomited. I looked behind us, to the flaming jungle and the orange smoke rising above it. Wind whistled around us.

From here we could see down across the island, see our base camp, and the forest fire that raged across the hillsides. But on the facing slope of one hill, separated from the inferno, the fire formed letters, enormous letters burning on the hillside.

'Hell', they said.

The little dinosaurs ran around in circles, and then scattered.

Bradley laughed.

There was a bright explosion, and fire erupted all around us. I was thrown backwards by the force of the blast, skidding along the ground until me head hit the trunk of a fallen tree. Bradley ignited; he ran screaming from the clifftop and fell all the way.

Out of the fires, a figure slowly began to emerge, vague at first, but then it came into sharp focus.

It was Dearing.

He grinned.


	19. What I Wanted

**XVIII: The Jungle Inside**

**Day ?**

**Hours.**

I could do nothing but lie there on the ground in the ring of fire, watching Dearing step slowly towards me against the liquid napalm.

He was naked from the waist up and his trousers were ripped and torn. His entire body was smeared with mud, with camouflage markings. I couldn't see his face, only a black and green mask with two white eyeballs in it. His old bandana was still on his head, mud-stained and tattered. He was twirling a knife in one hand, and held a rifle one-handed in the other.

I wanted to make a smart comment to him, but I didn't have anything to say.

He turned towards the cliff, looked down over the edge, and spat after Bradley. Then he straightened. "Hi Dearing," I managed. He tilted his head, but said nothing. "How's it going? I thought you were dead. It's…uh…nice to see you again, you know?" I was nervous, babbling.

He was breathing heavily.

"Why, Dearing? Cliched question, but why? I mean, revenge and all that, but-"

There was a howl in the forest, and then an answering bark. Raptors, some of them looking burnt and bruised, some of them wounded, were creeping out of the forest towards us. Dearing turned at them and I scuttled backwards along the ground.

He turned to me. "Isn't this what you wanted?"

I cracked, started to crawl backwards, knowing the cliff was behind me but I did it anyway. Dearing's eyes were bulging. "You're dead, Dearing. You're dead!"

Looking right at me. "You think that matters anymore? You think that matters? Where the fuck do you think you are, Long?"

Fear. "Why are you doing this?"

"You answer _me!_" he yelled. "What do you think this is? It's all here! All the way you saw it! Everything! You're fucking _in it_, Long, you're _in it!"_

I was staring up at him, swearing and babbling. I don't want this, I never did-

"You always did! You brought this upon yourself! Insanity is part of the whole fucking package! Horror, madness!" Blinded. "Isn't this what you wanted, Long?"

There was nowhere to go, but I ran anyway.

"This is what you wanted, Long!" he screamed, behind me. "This is what you wanted!"

The cliff edge raced towards me. Behind me, the raptors charged, but not at me. Dearing raged at them shouting dink fuckers. Kill all the gooks.

Relentless screaming, both human and beast, echoed behind me. I sprinted the last few metres and I could still hear the gunshots as I threw myself off the cliff, jumping as far away from the rock wall as I could. "Slope motherfuckers!" shouted Dearing. There was a sound like the crack of a whip, and then a resonant boom, and I felt warmth on my back. Then the sea came down on top of my head.

Fire, forming letters. Hell above me, nothing below me. And pain. Lots of pain. A flowering burst of clouded light and I felt panic on my skin. Heard the helicopter rotor blades swirl above. Smoke rolled. A spotlight knifed down into my eyes. The orange light flared out at the edges, forming a tunnel. Shapes and figures blurred and flashed around me. Blurred and flashed. In the distance I could hear shouting, and screaming, and gunshots. Some little part of my brain got the picture. LSD relapse. Near-death experience.

Impossible to describe, really.

And later, my head bumping against something hard, and looking up, and seeing more words, black serif on dirty white. Grace.

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_Not the end. NOT THE END._

_ORIGINAL A/N: Thanks for the reviews, all. Short chapter...but it's still not the end._

_And if you're still with us, Scorpio (I assume you're reading this in the near future, and from your perspective I'll be writing in the past...wow, time travel!) I hope you're still enjoying it. On with the show:_

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	20. Epilogue: War Stories

_Well, this is it. One note: open up media player and listen to The Doors - The End while reading. :P_

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**Epilogue: War Stories**

It was a clear, cold morning. The storm had blown itself out and the sun had risen and now everything was calm.

I sat on the bow of the ship, dangling my wounded legs over the front. The sea was lazy, and rose and fell all round me without much effort. Straight ahead, the forbidding black cliffs of Isla Sorna thrust up from the ocean. Above it hung a monstrous cloud bank, black smoke from the fires that were still burning. It darkened the sky for miles around.

The boat was called the Sweet And Full Of Grace. Some sense of humour. It was a rusting old heap with white paint peeling from every surface. I remembered the boat from when we first came to the island, remembered sitting in the very place I was sitting now. It had been in perfect repair then, but months floating on the ocean had not been kind to it. It seemed like a life ago.

Somehow, last night, I had dragged myself through the heaving ocean to where our stolen boat was moored and hauled myself aboard. I had suffered no major wounds, nothing at least that couldn't be treated with the first aid kit that was stowed in the cabin.

I had stayed up all night, watching the island burn. Dearing's gunshots still echoed across the bay for hours, until they finally faded away into total silence.

For one entire day I seemed paralysed aboard that boat. What could I do now? Go back to the mainland? Normal life? Not after what I had been through on the island. Dearing's face and voice still haunted me – the old, the real Dearing, the Dearing long gone, the funny Dearing who made jokes and messed about.

Finally, as night fell on that day in the boat, the island still burning, I managed to get the old engine running and after a short while working out how to drive the thing, began to pilot the boat in a vaguely easterly direction. I figured if I kept going east, I would get to the mainland eventually.

It was an uneventful journey. The radio on the boat had long since broken, and I was alone, and retreated into my own private hell, my own private horrors, my own private war.

I hit land eventually. I sold the boat and with the money I was able to make a start on building a new life. For a while I couldn't take it, because everything I saw made me think of what had happened, everything I heard reminded me, and Dearing stared back at me from every face. I was sick with humanity and I was sick with myself. When I lay awake at night, the screams of those who died while I stood by and did nothing echoed in my ears and mixed with Dearing's litany.

Post-traumatic stress syndrom, the doctor said. You been in any wars, Long? He chuckled.

I felt like I could never go back.

But hey, life goes on. I still don't think I've ever fully come to terms. I still think about it sometimes, wonder whether I deserved to die on that island too. Perhaps I did. You can form your own opinion on that one.

So here I am. I live in isolation. I have a few close friends, and it's still pretty much life as normal. I still play videogames, and I still watch some films. I just can't watch Vietnam movies anymore. They bring up too many memories, too many ghosts. I can't forget, and I doubt I can ever really accept.

I hope that in writing this, I can somehow soothe my mind and maybe lay all those ghosts to rest. Judge me, if you want. But I've already judged myself.

How much of it really happened? How much was my imagination? How much wasn't real? Did Dearing go that insane or was it just me? Did Dearing ever really exist beyond that day when the raptors got him? Perhaps he died there at the researcher's camp. After all, there wasn't any difference between fantasy and reality after that. No difference at all.

I think Dearing got to Vietnam before I did. He was the first now, I see that. The first to realise what we were turning into. The first to realise what had to be done. I just followed in his footsteps. In his position, I think I would have done the same.

And Hannigan? I don't think he ever really had any idea what was going on. He had brought us out there to settle some ancient score or vanquish some mental demon. How old was he? Maybe fifty? Old enough, just about, to have been in 'nam thirty-odd years ago.

Corporate espionage? Embryos? I doubt it. For a time, Ingen had controlled nature, controlled everything - and just maybe he was trying to work out how they'd done it.

Dearing was right about one thing though. I did want it – all of it.

I picture him prowling those jungles still, slipping from shadow to shadow, one with the forest. I know it's ridiculous.

Still out there, Dearing?

I like to think so.

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_And that's it. It's been a fun ride, and I'd like to thank everybody who's read this far. And hey, if you liked this, put me on author alert - you won't get spammed, I rarely write anything - but when I do...well, I should stop being so self-important. Hope everyone enjoyed that. I know I enjoyed writing it. Sulk out.  
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